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Author
Shakespeare
Producer
Thelma Holt
Director
Yukio Ninagawa
Costume
Lily Komine
Performer
Hamlet
Michael Maloney
Claudius
Peter
Egan
Gertrude
Frances Tomelty
Polonius
Robert Demeger
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Barbican Theatre
10
- 27 November 2004 |
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There
are so many things to admire
in this Bite:04 in association
with Thelma Holt and Theatre
Royal Plymouth production
that I feel rather surly in
saying that in the end I did
not enjoy it as much as I
was expecting to at the outset.
The opening of the play is
magnificent with a sparse
set, dangling strings and
swaying light-bulbs suggesting
both a symbolic labyrinth
and a Gothic castle and a
tolling bell. Immediately
the audience is transported
to a distant time and place
and to an unspecified metaphysical
location in which significant
events are to be revealed.
These dual-meaning images
permeate the production and
is one of its strongest components.
Later the dumb-play and its
associated scenes are evocatively
acted in Japanese-style which
highlights both their self-containment
and the meaning devised for
them by Hamlet and understood
all too angrily by Claudius.
The
director, Yukio Ninagawa,
paced the play fast, especially
the opening scenes which are
so furious that some of the
lines were lost in the helter-skelter
of the search for atmospheric
naturalism. This was the beginning
of my disappointment even
though later in the post-interval
section things slowed and
lines were better delivered.
Some characters emerged from
this haste better than others
giving a strange twist to
the meaning of the play. Peter
Egan, for instance, a superb
Claudius, manages to grade
his voice and manner to make
a regal and conciliatory king.
He may have usurped the throne
by evil means but now he seems
to be doing his best to achieve
a peace with other parties.
Egan's superb handling of
the anthitheses in the third
act monologue "O! my offence
is rank" was the best in the
play and so shifted sympathy
towards him, the villain,
rather than Hamlet. Stretched
on the image of the Cross
as the indecisive Hamlet observes
him for a moment made one
believe Hamlet guilty of proposed
murder instead of justified
revenge. One might argue that
that is one of Hamlet's dilemmas,
but I don't think it was intended
here and was more the result
of Egan's magisterial performance
than a re-interpretation of
Hamlet.
Along with Egan Robert Demeger's
Polonius also poses problems
due to his outstanding performance.
Polonius in the play is a
garrulous old man, well-meaning
perhaps, but oddly given some
famous and very telling lines.
Laertes may be bored, but
Demeger's delivery of his
famous advice speech in Act
1 Scene III made on warm to
wise experience rather than
oft-repeated platitudes. His
death behind the arras when
he seemed to be justifiably
protecting Gertrude seemed
all the more unfair as a result.
Also superbly enthralling
was the grave-digger scene
in Act 5. The wit and puns
between Jim Hooper's first
grave-digger and Hamlet came
up fresh and entertaining
in a way that is not always
the case. Word-clarity and
pace made this possible. Much
the same can be said of Brendan
O'Hea's Rosencrantz and Nick
Bagnall's Guildenstern. These
are significant rather than
major roles, but each played
his part in the double-act
superbly and again it was
not easy not to sympathise
even with their mission to
murder Hamlet on the king's
orders.
For me the central problem
was Michael Moloney's Hamlet.
Though he played the partly
consistently well, the conception
behind it seemed flawed. Hamlet
has man of the most intelligent,
intellectual lines in the
play, and on one occasion
he is found reading a book.
He joshes with the players
in a very knowing way and
was about to return to Wittenberg
University after Claudius's
coronation. His inactivity
must in part be due to his
intellectualisatin of each
problem, a characteristic
rammed home by his celebrated
soliloquies. Yet I could never
believe Moloney's Hamlet had
done or was about to do any
of these things. His mumbled
or gabbled words suggested
much more a disenchanted teenager
than a perplexed scholar.
His irritating adolescence
almost made his final demise
a relief. You could even imagine
Claudius wanted to get rid
of him not so much because
he was threat but more because
he was whining nuisance. Egan
spoke his lines as though
he knew what they meant, Moloney
rushed through them with some
odd emphases as though he
did not. And this inevitably
for me flawed the whole production.
Hamlet and the booming Bob
Barrett as Horatio squandered
the audience's sympathy in
the search for an elusive
naturalism and a manufactured
anger. One has to make Hamlet
sound as though he might have
said those almost improbable
lines otherwise there is not
point in performing the play.
I did not find that Maloney
ever managed to say his lines
with sufficicent measure or
clarity for me to believe
in his Hamlet.
Thus my sympathy amongst the
final deaths was very mixed:
poor Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes,
Ophelia and Polonius. Thank
goodness someone silenced
that irritating Hamlet.
Roderick
Swanston |
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