Malthouse
Estate Warehouse, Shoreham, 2nd May to 8th June
The
Chekov commentary 'Before I Sleep', which two
Festivals ago played to record-breaking audiences and great acclaim
(including
around here) finally receives it's follow-up. This time the
subject is 'Hamlet'. Then they'd asked audiences
not to give away the “secrets” of the show. Judging by other
reviews, they seem to have accepted the inevitable this time around.
(Though the programmes are notably not handed out till the end, and
contain no images from the production.) However, being obsessive
about spoilers I've saved writing about it until it ended its run.
(And not out of my normal tardiness. Honest, guv.)
That
venue name above, that's not some trendy monicker dreamed up by some
Factory records fan. This really was staged not just in a disused
warehouse, but one which required Festival-goers to trek out to
Shoreham. However, unlike it's predecessor, it's not actually a
site-specific work. If it couldn't be reproduced in a conventional
theatre, it could be done anywhere with a square space large enough.
In fact it seems it will shortly be reproduced in Newcastle. (Hence
my post label 'Site-specific promenade performance', coined
especially for 'Before I Sleep', remains without a
second outing.)
We
enter a room surrounded by mirrors on four sides. At first we see
only ourselves. Projected images then appear. But as things progress
more and more of the spaces become backlit, revealing 'cells' or
'pods' inhabited by the actors, like the units of a corporate office block, only horizontalised. As
one scene ends the lights dim, for others to take up elsewhere. We
see the characters through these patinas throughout. These shallow
pods become like a series of reliefs, where they encounter each other
but with a virtual formal bar on interaction. Being upstaged in this
performance would have been almost literally impossible. Within this,
they sometimes film each other, and we see the image projected live
as they talk.
Many
spaces are private rooms, like cloistered worlds, someone's boudoir,
someone's office, even someone's bathroom. They share a minimalist,
modern sheen - silver lamps and iMacs. It looks like the sort of
stuff people buy to represent themselves, which never really gets
past looking just like stuff they've bought.
This
time round, the play's much more the thing. In sharp contrast to
'Before I Sleep', this is less a commentary upon a
play and more a reworking of it. We start somewhere near the start of
the play and end at the end of it. The simple structural change of
having a single audience who turn up at the same time to see the
performance once, rather than a series of groups exploring an
environment in different speeds and at different orders, virtually
insists on this.
However,
we should stop to consider how radical a reworking this would seem if
not seen in the shadow of its predecessor. Many of the best-known
elements are ruthlessly expunged (including “alas Yorick”),
others rearranged and speeches swap character's mouths. Dialogue
sometimes continues across pods, overlaps between scenes and
sometimes degenerates into babble.
When
watching a familiar play like this, it is hard to avoid thinking
“this is their take on the suicide soliloquy”, “this is their
take on the climactic duel” and so on. Many reworkings seem chiefly
aimed at defamiliarising the audience from the material, to stop them
thinking like this. This is the first production I have seen which
effectively says “this is our take on the suicide soliloquy”,
“this is our take on the climactic duel.” Many people commented
that 'Before I Sleep' needed only the most cursory
knowledge of 'The Cherry Orchard.' Not so here.
Paradoxically, through being given more of your actual
'Hamlet' we're expected to know more of your
actual 'Hamlet.'
There's
one other notable formal device. Characters will usually fall into
darkness when their pod is unused. But at various points Hamlet
remains - staring morbidly ahead from his own cell while others
discuss him and repeat his words. Partly this fits the theme of
spying and observation. But there's more. His signature “to be or
not to be” speech is read by other characters in staggered,
overlapping fashion, he only joining in near the end. Why might this
be?
There
is, of course, method in such a style of production. Just as there's
a reason why 'Hamlet' is Shakespeare's best-known
play, and “to be or not to be” his most-quoted phrase. More than
any other of his works, it isn't about journeying to the place,
getting hold of the thing or overcoming the other bloke. Commentators
focus on the Prince's “delay” to the point that they may as well
be talking about an effects pedal. His dilemma, his inner conflict
isn't some problem to be overcome, it's the very core of the play. He
doesn't exist as a plot function. Quite the reverse, the play exists
first to precipitate his conflicted state of mind, then to reflect
and externalise it. Beyond that, it has no further use for such
things. He's effectively soliloquising even when other characters are
talking to him. As he says himself, “there is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
There's
perhaps two ways to read 'Hamlet.' The other
characters represent the weight of society, the world against the
individual, confining and defining him, unable to accept there's a
multitude going on inside his head.
His 'madness' becomes his response, his means to assert his
own idiosyncrasy. Or alternately they're externalisations of his
thoughts, the King his sublimated desire to kill his father and shag
his mother, and so on.
This
production, by pruning the play back to the bones, throws this
dichotomy into sharper relief. The dissembled nature of the
production isn't a means, a way of arriving at the point, it's more
that it is the point. The parade of windows in
place of a linear narrative, suggest a fractured self. In essence, it
highlights the way self-awareness becomes a poisoned chalice. As soon
as we become self-aware we become an object of our own
contemplation. Inevitably, we split and divide. Rather than being
enabling, the expanded awareness leads to indecision, a kind of
paralysis. That staple of historical fiction, the avenging hero, is
replaced by a ball of confusion forever trying to be both
psychiatrist and patient. The mirrors, the modernist design, the
cell-like pods, the separation between characters, all underline
this.
But
in so doing it firmly comes down on one side. In proving this point
it highlights the way the other characters are aspects of Hamlet's
mind, echoes of his thoughts. He is both the King and the silent,
scowling youth who would depose him. And I am not at all sure that this
is the sort of question we want resolved. A good
production of 'Hamlet' will let your mind wander
freely between these concepts, not nail it to either pole. Take a
classic quote, such as “I could be bounded
in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not
that I have bad dreams.” Is the Prince dismissing his compatriots
as mere “bad dreams”, as though they were unwanted interruptions,
inferior to and more trivial than his own thoughts? Or is Shakespeare
suggesting they are literally bad dreams,
projections of Hamlet's subconscious? We don't know, we probably
never shall, and that's a sign of things working the way they should.
A play about a man in conflict, it should itself be in
conflict, shouldn't it?
There's
also a problem in staging the play which would not have existed in
Shakespeare's day, Hamlet seems the proto-Goth, the ultimate teenager
in sulky self-obsessive war against his parents. He's portrayed here
as black-clad, petulant and ponytailed, smashing up his bedroom in a
tantrum. A similar scene shows Ophelia in her father's study,
sneakily sitting in his chair like she's trying out adulthood, going
through his desk drawers like they're playthings. At such times the
performance seemed to be taking these aspects head-on, choosing to
highlight them. Yet at others it seemed to want to retreat back into
a more 'classic' Shakesperian drama, as if it was raising things it
could not quite control.
Us
old-timers of this town tend to talk about 'Old' and 'New' Brighton.
'Before I Sleep' felt very Old Brighton. Though I
don't believe anyone involved came from squat culture, it seemed to
take much of the spirit of squat events (occupying a
space then improvising from what was found there, extemporising props
and themes) and make them into something more focused and polished.
In fact when I first saw the redecorated windows, I assumed it was the
work of 'art squatters.'
Conversely,
'The Rest is Silence' seemed new Brighton. “This
stretch of coastline is set for regeneration,” comments the
programme. “We are in the world of warehouse conversions and
loft-house developments with minimalist interiors.” But, perhaps
significantly, this environment looks not like some last hurrah of
the old but as if the yuppies have already arrived. (Ironically,
while this was being staged squatters
did occupy the previous venue for a conference.) The work is
sharp, sophisticated, inventive and thought-provoking. But 'Before
I Sleep' was an assault on the senses, like entering some
crazy wonderworld where imagination was untamed.
This
I admired. But that I loved.
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