Frances Dharmalingham, our president, saw this film recently in Perth. Here's her report:
I have lost count of the number of Hamlets I have seen and enjoyed, but the
2010 National Theatre production, screened last weekend, was one of the very
best.
An interview with the director, Nicholas
Hytner, preceded the performance. He
mentioned the totalitarian regime of Elizabeth I in which her spymaster,
Walsingham, kept control through a pervasive spy network, and he then pursued
the idea with reference to modern all-embracing surveillance techniques. This theme was clear in the production, with
security guards, walkie-talkies, cameras and shadowy figures half-seen by open
doors or through murky windows:
throughout, a sense was established that speakers might at any time be
overheard and reported to their disadvantage.
The play began with the almost unbearably
loud sound of a jet plane taking off and flying away into the distance, a sound
which punctuated the performance. It was
surprisingly threatening, serving to underline the fact that Denmark was on a
war footing and this was further strengthened immediately with the midnight
scenes on the battlements – so cold, so nervy, awaiting the arrival of an
inexplicable phenomenon.
The ghost’s entrance was quiet, difficult
to see. At times the clever lighting
made him appear almost transparent.
There were no melodramatic sound effects, no sepulchral echo, none of
the usual 'ghostly' details. This was a
dead king who felt great anger and hurt not only at what had been done to him,
but also because the crime was unrecognised and the perpetrator
unpunished. He spoke with complete
realism and it was therefore the more believable that Hamlet should accept the
whole incident as real. (Although, of course, he questions it in retrospect.)
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| Rory Kinnear in rehearsals for Hamlet at the National Photograph: Johan Persson |
Hamlet was played by Rory Kinnear, whose
powerful Iago I had seen only recently.
It is hard to imagine two characters more different, so I was looking
forward to seeing his interpretation.
Hamlet seemed to me a terribly unhappy young man, not given the chance
to mourn his dead father, feeling manipulated and not seriously respected at
court, and verging dangerously close to clinical depression by the time
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrived.
The soliloquies were truly Hamlet’s thoughts. We could see them working in his face, and
the words, although perfectly audible, seemed almost projected from his mind to
ours. Kinnear’s technical virtuosity was
admirable, but never intrusive.
All the characters were interesting and
plausible. Polonius, for example, was
not the usual senile dodderer who would long since have been pensioned
off. He was of course annoyingly
verbose, but still an experienced senior official. Just occasionally he came to an abrupt halt,
lost the track and floundered for a moment suggesting perhaps the onset of
age-related dementia, which was far more believable than the sort of ‘lean and
slippered pantaloon’ often portrayed.
The comedy inherent in his early scenes was gently brought out too.
Claudius really was a smiling villain, a
full-time politician always aware of the media and his audience. This was particularly emphasised in his
soliloquy after the play, in which he tries to balance remorse for his crime
with retaining the benefits of the crime.
I had always viewed this speech as the one time Claudius was sincerely
wrestling with his conscience, but this
Claudius had no conscience, apparently.
His words were rather like a rehearsal; there was an imagined audience,
almost an imagined microphone and camera, as if he could not break the habits
of a lifetime, and when he knelt to pray one knew very well that his attempt
could not possibly succeed.
Gertrude was a middle-aged sexpot – very
curvaceous, wearing clothes just too tight for good taste and a hair- style
just a little too unkempt for the wife of a national leader. The strain of events began to show as she
drank increasingly recklessly, and this culminated in a clever touch of
insolence as she defied Claudius and drank from the poisoned goblet. Her great scene attempting to upbraid her son
was remarkable for the extremes of mood displayed by both characters, from
desperate sadness, to anger, to horror, and finally an extraordinary burst of
hysterical laughter, quickly supressed, as Hamlet joked while dragging out
Polonius’ body.
It was interesting to note that the
visiting players really did take note of Hamlet’s instructions. After the stylised, balletic dumb-show, The Mousetrap was performed without
histrionics, simple and realistic.
Laertes’ attempted rebellion and the rapid
movement of events to the finale proceeded with admirable clarity, though
Laertes himself was less impressive than one might have wished. His voice was hoarse and speech not always
clear, suggesting that perhaps he had a cold, obviously a problem when a live
performance is filmed. However, he
acquitted himself well in the final duel, which was staged quite simply but,
after the unexpected cut, with convincing ferocity.
It must be difficult when speeches are very
well-known for an actor to avoid triteness, but Horatio spoke his farewell
lines to Hamlet with such natural sincerity as to be genuinely moving. The arrival of Fortinbras and the English
ambassadors could have been an anti-climax after such strong emotion but they
served to bring the action to a dignified and respectful conclusion. As the lights dimmed we heard, appropriately,
the last jet plane take off and fly away, fading to silence.
The whole performance was marked by very
fine acting and meticulous attention to the text, down to the subtlest nuance.
There was of course plenty of action, and it always arose from the text
-- no distracting extraneous flamboyance; no leaping from balconies during the
duel; no carrying the corpse cruciform and shoulder-high, even though we knew
the body would be borne to the stage later. Even Polonius and Claudius
were dispatched with the minimum of fuss, but absolutely in accordance with the
script. The actors' intensity created for the audience a real sense of
what Aristotle must have meant by catharsis. An added bonus is that such
a minute examination of such a well-known play leaves me with so many details
to ponder for a long time.
