A fertile promontory: Sydney Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet

Hamlet needs no introduction – as a play or as a character – yet each successive staging seems to require a justification, an explanation of its resonances and relevance. For director Steven Hopley, this explanation is simple: to be the first production staged on Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour, and what a treat this is. We are met near the Opera House by a small water taxi and ferried across to the island; the scene from Shakespeare in Love with Shakespeare crossing the Thames in a similar boat immediately comes to mind – “I’m a bit of a writer myself…” The sun sets over the city, we step onto the island, and we are in another place: Elsinore, Denmark. Here, now, then; always.

We are met at the jetty by two guards in red coats, ghosts from a much earlier time, who demand to know how goes there. From our midst comes the answerer, Horatio, and we are thrust into the middle of a world of secrecy, lies, madness, appearances, and two families whose fortunes and fates are inextricably intertwined. As the scenes progress, and we move from the jetty to the tower, the powder rooms, the forecourt and the promenade, we get a very real sense of Hamlet’s Elsinore, we become part of the play itself, observers and conspirators to confessions and murders, and it makes a normally ponderous play seem fresh, new, and exciting.

Who’s afraid of Yasmina Reza?: Twisted Tree Theatre’s God of Carnage

Yasmina Reza’s 2006 play, God of Carnage, has been performed to critical and popular acclaim around the world, and is now produced by independent company Twisted Tree Theatre at the Tap Gallery’s Downstairs theatre.

The story of two families who arrange a meeting to discuss the appropriate action required after one child attacked the other with a stick in the park, God of Carnage – appropriately – descends into a chaotic and increasingly childish evening of name-calling, taunts, accusations, drinking and vomit. Described recently in The Age as being “like a simpler incarnation of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap, [the] chief joy of the play is the way it slides into an Edward Albee-style marital free-for-all, as the adults begin to act worse than the children who brought them together.” Like Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tsiolkas’ The Slap, there is something positively delicious and bordering on schadenfraude about watching two couples tear each other to pieces as they try to come to an agreement.

Round dance: Enigma’s La Ronde

Written around 1900 and not performed publicly until 1920, Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (or Der Reigen in the original German) is based around a simple theatrical conceit, whereby ten characters (five men, five women) come together in a series of sexually-charged scenes, with one person leaving the scene at the end and replaced by the next character, in the pattern AB, BC, CD… JA. Its title, literally translating to ‘the round’ recalls the musical pattern of a round where interlocking melodies are staggered over the top of each other at intervals. Presented here by independent company Enigma, La Ronde is a seductive and beguiling play which, under Steven Hopley’s direction, shines and crackles with a very real sexual frisson.

Hopley’s staging here amplifies Schnitzler’s structural conceit; by staging La Ronde ‘in the round’ on a raised circular dias (designed by Rachel Scane), Hopley creates an intimacy which could easily have been lost in a larger, more conventional theatre space. Sparsely furnished, Hopley’s cast furnish their scenes with a vitality and a believability which is perfectly suited to Schnitzler’s timeless text. Some references have been understandably updated, but the play remains largely intact and (surprisingly) relevant and applicable to a twenty-first century audience.

Lend me your ear: The Vanguard’s William Shakespeare’s Reservoir Dogs

It has been often said that Shakespeare, with Titus Andronicus, had a Tarantino phase, but did Tarantino have a Shakespeare phase? This production, presented by Russall S. Beattie and playing for four (k)nights at Newtown’s The Vanguard, sets out to test this hypothesis, and the result is nothing short of outrageously enjoyable, sitting somewhere between parody, homage, and an Elizabethan revenge thriller. Written and directed by Steven Hopley, it does not seek to replicate Tarantino’s film on stage (as with Strictly Ballroom The Musical), but instead renders Tarantino’s screenplay into iambic pentameter, featuring many subtle quotations of Shakespeare’s own words, clever assimilations of Elizabethan blank verse, as well as three Elizabethanised pop songs, sung by Key William, the in-house bard.

The story, as in Tarantino’s film, remain intact, so too do the ‘Dogs,’ styled here as bandit knights, perfect strangers to one another, hired to rob a casket of precious jewels from a coach on its way to the King. When their heist is thwarted, it becomes apparent that one of them must be an officer in disguise. The six knights – Sirs Blue, Orange, Brown, Blonde, Pink, and White – are here a motley collection of swaggering fellows, clad in leather doublet jackets, breeches, and boots, wearing daggers at their belts, with temperaments as roguish as their deeds. Along with Lord Joseph, Pleasant-Fellow Edward, Holdaway and an Officer, Hopley expertly adapts Tarantino’s chamber-ensemble into a sweaty and heady concoction of revenge, best served cold.

The quality of mercy: Sydney Shakespeare Company’s The Merchant of Venice

Written in 1596, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is generally classified as one of his comedies, along with masterpieces such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing. While there certainly are comedic elements to Merchant, it is not altogether a comedic play in the definition generally used to classify Shakespeare’s work. While it does encompass many scenes of focused around the idea of love, the titular merchant is accosted by Shylock, a money-lender, because he defaulted on the loan of 3,000 ducats and is thus required to pay the bond – the infamous pound of flesh.

It’s a dark play, full of politicking and financial matters, but underneath it all is that wonderful Shakespearean sense of humanity and life, the very lifeblood that has made him and his works what they are today. In the hands of the Sydney Shakespeare Company, their Merchant of Venice is a clear, honest and simple telling of this problematic play, one which fills the tiny sixty-five-seat TAP Gallery theatre with a warmth and generosity of spirit which is often lost in the hands of others.