Hamlet (2015)

This well-performed, visually-rich production was the subject of my latest National Theatre Live experience.  The big news is, of course, Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, and it’s no shocker to report that he does a bang-up job as the put-upon prince of Denmark.  Beyond that, the production isn’t without its missteps, but overall, it offers a fine telling of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays.

If you need a Hamlet synopsis, here it is.  The titular Danish prince has been struggling since the recent, unexpected death of his father, and the fact that his mother has already remarried (Hamlet’s uncle, who has now assumed the throne) doesn’t help matters.  As if he didn’t have it rough enough, Hamlet’s world is rocked when the ghost of his father appears to him and reveals that he was in fact murdered by Hamlet’s selfsame uncle.  Hamlet is charged with avenging his father’s death, a task that tests him to the limit.

Obviously, Cumberbatch is tremendously good.  He makes even the most famous speeches feel fresh and unstudied, and the weight of Hamlet’s mission runs electrically through every inch of his performance.  This might sound weird, but I especially want to highlight the scenes before the ghost appears, before the story really gets cooking, as it were.  In these initial scenes, Cumberbatch portrays Hamlet’s depression and grief so beautifully – some productions don’t pay much attention to this aspect, but here, he’s so effective as a young man who is genuinely too distressed to hold it together, and I really appreciate that.  The production also features Ciarán Hinds (Capt. Wentworth or Mance Rayder – take your fandom pick) as a rather slimy Claudius, and I enjoyed seeing Leo Bill (Darwin from The Fall) pop up as Horatio.

I find some of the staging to be quite impactful.  Claudius and Gertrude’s wedding feast is perfect, with everyone (save Hamlet) dressed in white but with shadows encroaching from all around them.  There’s a device in the second half of the play that evokes feelings of ravaged Iraqi palaces after Hussein was removed from power, or post-Revolutionary St. Petersberg.  It’s really striking to me and creates such a palpable sense that the dynasty is crumbling under the characters’ feet – awesome.

I don’t have many complaints about the production, but my main gripe is fairly major.  I don’t like how some of the “mad” sequences are staged; there’s an over-reliance on props and Cumberbatch acting “goofy” (ie, marching around in a drum major’s uniform.)  It’s too over-the-top for me.  I have a hard time buying that anyone at the palace would believe that Hamlet has actually had a mental breakdown when his “mad” behavior is so obvious and stagey.  This is quite unacceptable, because if the production had Hamlet making a stronger, subtler effort to play mad, Cumberbatch would’ve done it masterfully.  As staged, however, he’s not nearly as effective in these scenes as he might have been.

Warnings

Violence, thematic elements, and sexual references (including a pun on the C-word – that Shakespeare, I tell ya.)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966)

 

(Although the above picture is from the 1990 film adaptation, this post is about the play itself.)

 

This extraordinary play introduced me to Tom Stoppard years ago.  I’d rented the movie sight unseen, knowing that I liked Gary Oldman and it presumably had something to do with Hamlet, and immediately fell in love.  I was quick to seek out the script and check out more from Stoppard.  After reading the Coast of Utopia trilogy next, I definitely had a favorite playwright.

 

The story of Hamlet is turned inside out here, told through the eyes of his old school friends.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, enlisted to “glean what afflicts” the mad young prince, play minor roles in Shakespeare’s play but still meet messy ends.  In this tale, they’re given center stage, muddling uncertainly through their task and heading inexorably toward their tragic finish. 

 

It’s an interesting viewpoint.  I’ve seen this technique before, although it’s more typically a story reworked from the villain’s perspective.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren’t nefarious, and in Hamlet, they’re far from dynamic.  Essentially, they’re pawns in a royal game with little agency of their own.  However, both are of course the protagonists of their own lives, and as such, the play reframes Hamlet to be entirely about them.

 

The play has a strong absurdist bent, part of which comes from their unconscious knowledge that they’re minor characters in someone else’s play.  Left alone onstage too long, they grow antsy for someone more important to appear.  They despair at how little impact they seem to have on events and yearn for something meatier to work with.  “All we get is incidents!” Rosencrantz exclaims.  “Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?!”  Additionally, their generic interchangeability in Shakespeare’s play is magnified here – no one can tell them apart, to the point where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves are no longer sure which is which.

 

Besides this nudging of the fourth wall, great absurdity and surrealism can be found in the incidental dialogue.  The pair’s actual scenes from Hamlet play out fairly verbatim, but between these scenes are long segments of the two of them basically waiting for something more to happen.  In these sequences, they obviously discuss their situation and try in vain to influence the proceedings, but that just scratches the surface.  They also play word games, philosophize, pick fights with tragedians, tell jokes, and challenge the laws of both probability and fate.

 

This is where the play truly lives.  Stoppard’s sparkling, whip-smart wit comes fast and furious, dancing nimbly between wry, outrageous, and reflective.  There are so many excellent scenes worth mentioning – the game of questions, roleplaying their confrontation with Hamlet, and Rosencrantz’s “dead in a box” speech are a few highlights.  The hapless leading men have an easy, bickering back-and-forth that rival any comedy duo alive or dead.  Rosencrantz’s eager-but-dim logic complements Guildenstern’s penchant for overly-complicated chains of thought, and the two squabble their way through the play with pitch-perfect timing.  Yet, for all that they get on one another’s nerves, they both know that they’re in this impossible, inscrutable situation together, and they always have each other’s backs in the end.

 

Warnings

 

Sexual references and a little swearing.