It’s surely the
most well-known play in the English language. If not in its entirety then from
its conglomeration of famous lines. By its very nature, 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. Virginia Woolf once said that “to write down one’s
impressions of Hamlet as one reads it
year after year would be virtually to record one’s own autobiography, for as we
know more of life, so Shakespeare comments on what we know.” Perhaps taking a
leaf from Woolf’s sentiments, director Simon Stone has fashioned a compelling
new interpretation of Shakespeare’s play, and turns it into a chamber piece for
eight actors, a pianist and a singer.
Belvoir’s Hamlet, as with all of
Stone’s production, is set upon a plane of dark and light, black and white.
Costumed by Mel Page in variations on formal attire, these inhabitants of Stone’s
Elsinore seem to inhabit the background of each others’ scenes, giving the play
an oddly disconcerting and ghostly presence, which it of course already has,
but Stone’s staging concept amplifies it.
