Before I say anything about the performance, I think it is important to establish that - as it is well-known - Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's longest, weightiest and more complex plays, and poses a daunting task for even the most skilled and experienced of directors: including David Farr. Yet, the RSC is itself a formidable company - the defining establishment of British theatre - and Hamlet's cast includes some stellar theatre stalwarts. Despite the magnitude of the venture, the RSC had the tools and talent to produce a fantastic show.
Firstly, I must begin with our Hamlet - Jonathan Slinger. My criticisms of Slinger are multitudinous, and my praises (sadly) lacking.
- My primary problem with Slinger is his age. At the expense of appearing ageist, at 40 years old Slinger is simply too old to convincingly perform Hamlet. With a balding pate and distinctly middle-aged mannerisms Slinger is void of the youthful charm and spirited fervency one would expect a scholar recently returned from Wittenburg to posses; also - and I'll probably sound shallow as well as ageist now - he lacks any sense of Hamlet's animated attractiveness. These may sound like very superficial, pernickty points, yet, arguably our sense of Hamlet's youth and attractiveness are essential to our appreciation of his character; in the RSC's performance, there is ultimately no viable reason why Ophelia, and more importantly the audience, would be drawn to Hamlet. This inappropriate casting marrs every aspect of the play. When Hamlet is 'mad' (or feigning madness), his witty speeches and silly phrases lose effect; delivered, as they are from the vessel of a middle-aged man, they seem more like a joke your dad (or specifically my dad) would make, than brilliant flourishes of a quick, resourceful wit [in conjunction with this, Slinger's tedious - and ofttimes cringeworthy - tendency to hyperbolically elongate words or repeat them in a silly, childlike manner is unduly incongrous with his 'grumpy old man' facade, and very Jack Dee-esque, but I shall say more on his poor delivery later]. Perhaps more blasphemously, due to Slinger's maturity Hamlet's philosophical speeches on the nature of time, death and life concurrently emerge more as the embittered, dulled, disillusioned mumblings of one J. Alfred Prufrock than the fired-up, ebullient, exhaustive interrogations of a youthful Hamlet, struggling to comprehend the world's inherent complexities as he experiences the thrilling epoch of newly-burgeoning philosophical and worldly consciousness; the essential expansion of the mind (from considerations merely of the self, to musings on mankind as a whole), that occurs primarily when one makes the tentative, perplexed, perplexing transition from boyhood to manhood. [For a portrayal of Hamlet fat and oozing all his intended youthful, spirited brilliance, rhetorical skill, playful wit and philosophical aptness, see - the ineffable, unparalleled - master that is Laurence Olivier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0xYbpYgdPQ]
- Another unignorable aspect of Slinger's portrayal of Hamlet, is his in excruciating tendency to over-act. Indeed, Hamlet is an intense, tragic, dramatic play; however, Hamlet's passionate speeches or mad ramblings are more poignant when considered in isolation. In Slinger's performance there is no respite, no relief from the relentless harangues of his constant crying/laughing etc.. A truly great dramatic performance climaxes, crescendos, deftly works up to moments of intense emotion or compelling action. Slinger's decision to play Hamlet all on one (ebulliently dramatic) level erases the subtle nuances of Shakespeare's original text: in his interaction with his father's ghost the audience's pathos is negated and the sublime cadences of the actual verse are lost, as we are unrelentingly subjected to Slinger's cringe-inducing, childish, repulsive cries. Where is the delicacy? Where is the simplicity? Why is a revered, well-known RSC actor performing like a naively exuberant, unexperienced teenager straight out of acting-school (and don't tell me that's what Shakespeare's Hamlet is - he is anything but). Unfortunately, it seems that the word 'subtle' is not in Slinger's vocabulary.
OK, so enough about Slinger (although I could say more), and onto Hamlet's other problems.
- The staging was confused, and quite frankly, ridiculous. Although I appreciate that the RSC is always striving to do new, exciting things with their sets, here they have massively overreached. The stage is a confusing conglomeration of high-school gymnasium, old-fashioned Scottish country-pile (see James Bond's family home, in Skyfall), littered with incipient fencing paraphernalia. There are simply too many 'themes' in conflict here, and, whats worse, none of them are remotely interesting/engaging/titillating. If anything, the play would be better suited to a simple, blank stage: at least then it would avoid the criticism of being confused/amateur in design. (A couple of extra notes on staging. The stage was littered with skulls - I assume to foreshadow Hamlet's famous 'Yorick' speech, but which actually debase it. In addition, the 'movers' took far too long to clear away the stage in preparation for the graveyard scene, totally distracting the audience from Hamlet and Horatio's conversation).
- Hand-in-hand with staging, naturally, goes costume. Again, there seems to be no consistent theme (or even thought) behind the costumes: Hamlet appears wearing a suit (circa 1950's), then time-travels back to a doublet and hose, before donning an absurd 'modern-day' hooded parka and jeans in the closing scene. Horatio and Ophelia suffer with the trials of dodgy knit-wear, meanwhile Claudius, the Queen, and their court are attired in a similarly inexplicable/clashing array of old-world fashion, 'modern' attire and fencing vizors. Yes, Hamlet is a play that thrives on the inherent inconsistencies and inconstancies of life, human psychology and physiology - but the RSC's costume choices seem more like an un-planned, accidental menagerie than a carefully-coordinated, intentional, thematic jumbling.
- A flaw I have touched upon, but find too ridiculous to merit discussion is the 'fencing' dimension of this production. It is unnecessary, un-textual, unriveting and - and this is perhaps the most offensive aspect of the whole sodding conundrum - isn't even executed well. Hamlet may have been a skilled swordsman - but these actors are not. The average theatre-goer in 2013 is sophisticated enough to appreciate this aspect of Hamlet's character without having it literally (and poorly) rammed in front of his eyes.
- I found Ophelia ill-cast and ill-concieved. I can see that Farr was attempting to make more out of her character, but really, in Shakespeare's text and in almost every other production of Hamlet, she is on the periphery. Hamlet has dimensions of 'love', yes, but it is not a 'love story'. Our focus is meant to be on Hamlet alone, which is why his relationship with Ophelia is largely left unwritten/open to the imagination. Forgive me for sounding anti-feminist, but Ophelia is an unimportant antecedent. If any female character is interesting in Hamlet, it is Gertrude: the character whose decision to marry her husband's brother tears the rug from under Hamlet, and corrupts the very fabric of the play's moral universe (On that point, Charlotte Cornwell's Gertude was bland, unmemorable, and dire: when, in the play, she is actually a rather interesting, ambiguous paradox of a woman. I do concede, however, that her performance was not exactly helped by having Mr. Over-actor - Slinger - as her counterpart, who prevented her from getting a word in edgeways, anyway). On a different note, Ophelia's eventual 'madness' was as unconvincing as Slinger's, and her smearing blood on Claudius and Gertude etc. a trivial, predictable motif - which crowned my dislike for Pippa Nixon's performance. *also, extremely superficially, I did not like her hair. Where are the famous locks intwined with flowers and weeds that drag her to her watery-grave - WHERE?!
- Hamlet is long, yes, but at four hours (including interval) the RSC's production was looong (with extra 'o's'). Given, Farr may have felt that he wanted to give the play its full-run, and allow all of Shakespeare's verse to be included - but there were scenes which were tedious and un-engaging, and could have benefited from being shortened. Although I largely believe in the 'sanctity' of the written text, it is natural and necessary that a literary piece should be formally (as opposed to thematically) modified and altered to fit its new, dramatic context. I read recently that Renaissance theatre goers were extremely adept listeners, and would sit through a four-hour performance of Hamlet with no qualms/discomfort. It is a lamentable, but real fact that modern audiences do not posses this astonishing faculty. In order to keep engaging audiences with albeit, the same material of the Renaissance, contemporary directors must at least attempt to make that material palatable and enjoyable for them. I am sad to say that if this was my first experience of professional theatre (as I suspect it was for some of the 14/15 y/o's sat in front of me) I would be unlikely to return. * NB I am not suggesting a dulling-down/de-elevation/modernisation of the text (these sorts of productions are repugnant) - my suggestions are merely in a formal sense.
- The final scene was inexplicably poorly acted.
- As the play ends, a fire alarm goes off and sprinklers flood the stage. Why was this necessary? The audience were not surprised, taken-aback, or even momentarily affected by this (shoddy, half-hearted) 'spectacle': in my mind, the only thing it achieved was making Ophelia's white dress extremely dirty - the RSC's dry-cleaning bill is going to be extortionate by the end of the play's run.
Despite my criticism there are a few - sparse - parts/factors of the RSC's Hamlet that I genuinely enjoyed.
- I thought Robin Soans was an excellent Polonious. He exquisitely portrayed all of Polonious' comic idisyncracies: from his inclination for proverbs (many of which have now entered common speech), his pompous verboseness, his sycophantic manouvers, and his insuppressible dislike for Hamlet. Soans pulled-off the character perfectly, and shone as, arguably, the most experienced and well-suited to his role.
- The dumb-play was extremely engaging, combining humour and dark-tragedy. The use of costumes/setting that would have furnished an actual dumb-show in the Renaissance conveyed the same sense of jeopardy and titillation Hamlet's first audiences would have undoubtedly felt: as they watched Claudius, watching the play of himself. There was menace, there was sexual-innuendo, there was unease and enjoyment: in this brief dumb-show Farr manages to engage and amuse the audience wholly, when in the actual theatrical performance - of which the dumb-show is a mere part - he only half-captivates them, and merely sporadically amuses them.
Evidently, as I warned you at before beginning, my criticisms vastly outnumber my praises. Overall, I feel extremely let down by the RSC: I expected an excellent performance of one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, what I got was a paltry 'show' of amateur dramatics, shoddy staging and sore-eyes from watching such a dull play for so long. I have booked tickets for a dramatic production of Venus and Adonis at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in May - I can only hope that it will outshine Hamlet, although that should not be too difficult.
JEM.
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