Shakespeare's Houses

In 1759, Reverend Francis Gastrell, the final owner/occupier of Shakespeare’s retirement home, New Place, was so incensed by the constant stream of tourists pitching up at his house and invading his lawn that he knocked out all the windows and chopped down the mulberry tree that had reputedly been planted in the garden by the bard. Then when the local council demanded Land Taxes, he furiously demolished the house itself, its ruins still rotting as he was run out of town by his bloodthirsty compatriots and banished from returning to Stratford for the rest of his life. Now, all that remains of the place where Shakespeare died are the stone foundations and a rather nice lawn, accessible from his son-in-laws property next door (see above).

Lord knows what Gastrell would make of the tourism which exists in his town now; it’s apparently the second biggest destination in the country behind London, its population of 23,000 probably doubling (tripling?) during the peak season. It’s not something the Shakespeare Trust shy away from; throughout their properties there’s a twin story, not just of his life and period but also of the people who’ve paid homage to him since; in places they highlight the other great thinkers who’ve also taken the same steps you have around the houses – in the birthplace they’ve even preserved one of the bay windows in which visitors famous and not so have left their mark or autograph. Which meant that though I was travelling alone, I didn’t often feel it, since I was part of a tradition stretching back centuries.

This wasn’t the first time I’d visited the birthplace; the last time was in the early nineties when I was studying the plays at school and it seemed the thing to do. Then, I’d characterised the experience as ‘disappointing’ (for reason I forget). Not so now. Having spent the intervening years becoming a proper fan of Shakespeare and discovering the plays and his life it was quite overwhelming to be standing in that place again, even if as the demonstrator described the method of his birth, her words were being translated into Japanese for some of the other visitors, the surprise of one half of the room to the news that the phrase ‘Night night, sleep tight’ referred to the way that Elizabethan babies were tucked in at night on a rope frame underneath the marital bed, repeated minutes later by the other half.

So I was rarely alone in these places, especially on Monday and Tuesday when the town was saturated by delegates from the 100th International Rotary Conference in Birmingham, all wearing a little white badge with their first name and country of origin on them. But just now and then, within a lull, by taking things slowly against the crowd, I’d find myself in an empty room and could briefly imagine what it must have been like to live that superficially simpler life. All five houses are to some extent frozen in time or recreations of a period in their history selected because of the association with Shakespeare, attempts to provide a context for students of history and literature and they work best when you can hesitate at a kitchen utensil or piece of furniture and think about how different the person using them must have been and whether you’re much of an improvement.

The demonstrators are the key element which brings these places alive. Some are simply tour guides offering a bit of background to the house and why it’s an important part of the story. Others, dressed in period costume, balance precariously between that and full blown improvisation. At Arden’s Farm, a group of roleplayers prepare a meal across the day and then sit and eat it to show what the process of living in the house was somewhat like. I spent ages in that kitchen talking to the cook about everything from the health awarness of Elizabethans to the preparation of nettles and why we don’t eat them as much these days, the information flowing from her lips as she shimmered in and out of character by the pronoun, like a Doctor Who actor appearing on Blue Peter being asked to break character by Simon Groom.

Just as interesting, at the birthplace, in the gardens at the back and the street in front, actor work through extracts from the plays, girly arguments from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Nurses advise to Juliet and according to the poster Hamlet soliloquy’s, all of them completely in character as though we’re witnessing the fraction of a production. Fighting to be heard against tourists chatting about cameras and children poking fun at their costume, they’re absolutely fearless and a rather more visceral way of reminding the visitor why they’re taking the time to walk about this house in particular than the introductory display in which a voiceover from Juliet Stevenson and Patrick Stewart tell us that we’re looking at the actually desk that Shakespeare may have learnt the classics from or the actual book, or actual etc.

My favourite was probably Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. It’s the most complete dwelling, the only one in which all of the rooms are given over to showing living rooms (all of the others including an exhibition space of one sort or another breaking the illusion), and the most romantic since it’s presumed to be the place were young William wooed his future wife, perhaps inspiring dozens of similar romances in his plays. Without a car or coach, the only approach seems to be a walk from the parish centre through a series of alleyways cutting across suburbia then a field and into the village of Shottery of which it is but one of a multitude of thatched buildings (which did mean I misidentified the odd building before finally happening upon what was obviously the tourist attraction). One of the moments of perfect calm I experienced during the week was sitting in the garden outside the house, listening to the birds and looking up past the roof towards a deep blue sky. I need to have more of those.

Home.

Life I’m not happy to be home.

There’s no greater mental barometer of how well a holiday went than the genuine feeling as you stumble onto the train at the end of the week (or in my case about four days) that you’re leaving a place were you felt complete and yourself and complete within yourself and those things are effortless, to return to a place where you have to work at them. That’s what vacations are supposed to do, but you hear so often about how stressful they can be, how often they’re nothing like a holiday because of the hassle involved in attempting to enjoy yourself, I’m so pleased and elated that I can genuinely say that I did enjoy myself, despite having developed blisters by the end of the first day and painfully limped through the rest of it.

I’ll be boring you stupid in the coming days (and weeks?) with tales of Stratford-Upon-Avon (and photos, so many photos) but I want to make the most of my Shakespearean glow by finally watching the BBC adaptations of his history plays so I’ll not spend too much time tapping things here today. Just to say this: after watching the results, I’m glad I didn’t follow my original idea of a coach tour. I watched coaches park up throughout the town, outside the various designated Shakespeare houses, the passengers herded off and into the dwelling which they’d trundle through briefly, take some photos, buy some souvenirs before being led back to the coach and on to the next attraction, presumably working through all five before returning to wherever they came from without the time to breath in the atmosphere.

To spend just half an hour here and there is not enough time. Much better, as I did, to slowly let the story of the bard's life through his home unfold slowly over a few days, seeing the places where he and his family were born, died, were buried and commemorated and discovering the world in which all of that happened. If you’ve already been yourself, you’ll know that there aren’t many places like it in Britain. It might have gained many of the elements of a modern town, the same high street shops which make most places seem like a photocopy of each other these days and industrialisation and suburbia just outside the centre, at magic hour it still retains the stillness of an ancient village, a reminder of what we've lost.

[Exit pursued by a bear.]

[End of Act I.]

'Shakespeare Made Fit' by Sandra Clarke.

Much as I love Shakespeare, I do get impatient with him sometimes. Well, not him exactly but the way that he’s being presented in repertory, or more precisely that of the thirty-eight (or so) plays in the canon, only about fifteen are regularly production. Rarely do the likes of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, All’s Well That Ends Well, King John, Cymbeline or particularly since it’s my favourite, Measure for Measure, see the inside of the playhouse. Critically they’re all perceived to have faults, or are generally unknown to audiences, so the playhouses tend to stick to the core repertory because that’s what the people want. Which is fine to a point, but those of us with adventurous tastes, it’s a bit disappointing when the only choice is yet another production of King Lear or Romeo & Juliet. What we need is to find a way of presenting the most popular plays which would attract the more seasoned/fatigued/picky theatre goer.

Sandra Clark’s book Shakespeare Made Fit offers another choice. In the restoration period, just after the theatres reopened in 1660 after the Civil War, to fill the gap in product, theatres were given license to produce Shakespeare. The catch was that by law, the versions put on could in general only be revisions and rewrites. So Troilus and Cressida became a tragedy, Romeo and Juliet lived, Measure for Measure and Much Ado were conflated and as Clark describes in her introduction: “Macbeth was done as a semi-opera with witches in flying machines”. Dozens and dozens of works by famous and infamous writers of the time and audiences flocked to them as texts which by then, to them, had become somewhat archaic were given a new lease of life.

Clark selects five examples providing commentary and a reproduction of the text: John Lacy’s Sauny the Scot, a contemporary retelling of The Taming of the Shrew giving the writer/actor a central role commenting on the action; The Tempest by John Drden and William Davenant prefiguring the text to become a comedy of manners; Dryden’s All For Love retelling the final hours in the lives of Anthony and Cleopatra; Nahum Tate’s notorious Lear in which the King lived to see his daughter married and Colley Cibber’s Richard III which drew from Shakespeare’s other histories to try and put the King’s machinations into some kind of historical context (an idea later borrowed by Olivier in making his film version of Shakespeare’s original).

These adaptations have had their fair share of criticism over the years with respected critics like Dover Wilson using words like “dismemberment” and “vandalism” when referring to them. In the commentary, Clark herself painstakingly notes the imperfections, especially in Lear which keeps large chunks of Shakespeare’s text whilst dropping in the material which changes the tone of the story, noting that in places it reads like two different plays mashed together. The deletion of “Now is the winter of our discontent …” from Richard III is hard to take, especially since the replacement, “Now are out Brows bound with Victorious wreaths …” is so pedestrian.

But, as Clark also points out, what these critics failed to notice, is that these adaptation do not destroy the original, they’re merely variations on a theme, just like the numerous films which have been turned out, and in many cases aren't half bad. True, some of these adaptations, especially Tate’s Lear, were the only versions in production for quite some time, but eventually they were superseded again, the Bard’s poetry fighting back and rediscovered. Many of them can stand separate from their sources, in much the same way that Shakespeare’s rarely criticised for rewriting and modifying some earlier version of Hamlet. I think by now you can work out what I’m about to say in the closing paragraph.

Why not put these adaptations back into production? On the page, it’s impossible to get the flavour of what these plays must have been like in the theatre, but there must have been something pretty entertaining about them if they stayed in theatres for so long. I’d love see how the happy conclusion to Lear worked in theatre and it would provide audiences who are less familiar with the originals an opportunity to see why Shakespeare’s work worked so well, his moral ambiguity and imaginative leaps set against the more linear line of thought here. If a theatre wanted to be really creative and the production team were up to it, original and adaptation could run simultaneously for that purpose. Seems a shame to let this part of our theatrical history sit and gather dust.

"Weeelll.... More of A question really."

Neil Gaiman suggests how the Doctor (mark 10) might tackle the big one ...

Extract from 'I Want New York' by Ogden Nash

"I think those people are unreliable are utterly unreliable
Who say they'd be happy on a desert island with a copy of the Biable
And Hamlet (by Shakespeare) and Don Quixote (by Cervantes)
And poems by Homer and Virgil and perhaps a thing or two of Dante's.
And furthermore, I have a feeling that if they were marooned till the millennium's dawn
Very few of us would notice they were gone.
Perhaps they don't like my opinions any better than I like theirs,
But who cares?
If I were going to be marooned and could take only one thing along
I'd be perfectly happy if I could take the thing which is the subject of this song.
I don't mean anything that was bought either by the post man or the stork.
I mean the City of New York."

DT 4 RSC @ BBC

I'm sure you've already heard by now, but just in case ...

David Tennant reprises role in RSC Hamlet for BBC Two

Well, him and the key players from the original cast. I had expected that it would be a filmed version of the stage show at the Courtyard, but it's being shot on location instead, which does sound rather wonderful.

Extract from Madeline Peyroux's "Bag of Bones"

In the title track of her sublime new album Bare Bones, Madeline Peyroux writing the lyrics herself for the first time, uses Hamlet to talk about the recent death of her father. She sings:

"Old Hamlet's done now, dead and gone
And there's no ghost who walks
Poor Yorrick tells you everything he knows
With no tongue to talk"

As she told The Telegraph: "I looked for ideas in literature [...] I checked out a few writers that I hadn't been able to grasp: Lorca, Neruda. I even tried Dante's Inferno because I wanted to look at the Christian idea of salvation in another poetic light outside the Bible."

That's in interesting way of looking at the play: to an extent perhaps the errant Hamlet, which is somewhat how he's portrayed at the outset is seeking salvation from his ways by seeking his dead father's revenge. Peyroux herself has had a chequered history -- is she implying that she too is trying to become a respectable person?

"Seeking the bubble reputation"

I'm always just slightly behind in reading weekend newspapers -- there's always many more words than can possibly be covered in those forty-eight hours even after skipping through articles about relationships, travel and property and everything else which is currently irrelevant. Now that I'm actually working at the weekend, that's going to become even more accute. I won't know what's happened in the world until at least Monday afternoon.

Today, I was actually reading Saturday's Guardian from the 14th April (Grand National Day) and fittingly that meant this rather wonderful piece by Jonathan Bate which illuminates William Shakespeare's passage over the years into become a legend and being tagged with the description 'genius' taking in his veneration by actors and academics alike.

If asked I will say that I'm a Shakespeare fan, in much the same way as I might describe myself as a Doctor Who fan or that I like films. A bit. I've as many different Shakespeare productions as anything else and like those other 'interests'. And like those other loves, I can't always quite put my finger on why I'm addicted. I do agree with the reasons usually trotted out by talking heads in television documentaries -- 'They're such great stories', 'The language is amazing' and 'He's a genius'.

But along with those forty odd works, there's also four hundred years of history to enjoy. As Bate somewhat describes, you can understand British history through the changes in attitudes to the plays, how they've been performed and the audiences that saw them. Charles I's decree that women should be allowed to take up the acting profession demonstrates a change in society and frankly its amazing that it took so long for you to get the vote after that. As Shakespeare is oft to demonstrate, nearly all men are pigs, especially the ones who make laws about things.

I think though that it's more to do with the fact that even though the words and the plot are the same, every production is different and more than any other writer its possible for a director and his actors to put their own personal stamp on them. I've seen dozens of Hamlets and each and every time, although the text is the same they're all different, they all resonate in different ways. It's simply fascinating intellectually to compare and contrast the interpretations to see who thought what was important.

Plus, in the media age, as this blog demonstrates, it attracts the collector in me. Even though I've eight complete works already, some bought, some presents, I'm gathering the Arden editions of the plays because of the notes and appendixes which often include the original texts such as the Ur-Hamlet that Shakespeare used as his sources. Then there are the collections of criticism, the biographies. On top of that there are the many hundred audio and visual recordings of the plays from the BBC Shakespeare (radio and television) through Argo to ArkAngel. Some people collect vinyl or music boxes or badges. I collect Shakespeare productions.

You would expect on hearing all of this, that I'd seen or at least read all of the plays in the canon. Not a bit of it. I'm working my way through my BBC Shakespeare boxset (in production order minus the histories -- oh yes) and greeting many of them for the first time. Just as I've not seen or heard all of the television Doctor Who (let alone the spin-offs), I think I've only actually come in contacted with about half of the bard's work.

Some of this is simply because the same twenty-odd plays tend to be in production at the expense of others. But also its through avoidance, because I can't imagine that the likes of As You Like It can be as good as the version I have in my head through years of reading about them. Of course they can -- they're by Shakespeare, but there's also the matter of seeing them for the first time in a decent production. Thankfully my first As You Like It, from the BBC, featured the sexy Helen Mirren in a silly hat and David Prowse whose performance was strangely moving for all the wrong reasons.

There's a lovely moment at the end when Mirren delivers to camera the closing speech which features the line 'If I were, that is, a woman' and she pauses slightly highlighting the irony of a line that Shakespeare wrote that would originally have been played by a boy, being read now by, well, Helen Mirren. The viewer is sharing a joke with Mirren at text's expense. That's another reason I love Shakespeare, watching actors and directors cope with moments when attitudes have raced ahead of what's been written.

So Happy Birthday Mr Shakespeare, whether it was yesterday or today or whenever you were actually born. Thank you for over a decade of entertainment and intellectual stimulation and for inspiring one of the biggest laughs I had in an English class when the teacher decided to show us Roman Polanski's mad as cheese film version of Macbeth. For the amazingly intimate Measure for Measure I saw at the Edinburgh Festival in 1998 when I once again inapropriately fell in love with the actress playing Isabella for the umpteenth time (see also Kate Nelligan in the BBC Shakespeare). And for Hamlet. All four hours of it.

New Tennant in Elsinore on Film

The Telegraph reports that David Tennant's turn as Hamlet is going to be filmed after all, over two or three weeks in June, which will be just after he's completed filming on Doctor Who.

As you can imagine, I'm very pleased.

'William Shakespeare: Complete Works' edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

One of the great myths perpetuated about the audience reaction in the original Globe Theatre is that the groundlings, the peasants standing just in front of the stage were like a modern football terrace, shouting loudly through the action, cheering and jeering with equal measure, the gentry sitting in the rafters taking in the linguistic and artistic brilliance of the verse and the allegorical details of the storytelling. In fact, as Jonathan Bate’s sublime general introduction to William Shakespeare: Complete Works explains those groundings would look up in silence awed by the sounds and language they were hearing, oh so otherworldly whilst it was the apparent nobility who would be criticizing and analyzing the quality of the words.

Lord knows what they would make of this edition of the canon, the so-called First Folio edited for the first time since its fourth edition over three centuries ago. The first edition was published posthumously by two of his friends as a way of commemorating the work of their friend. It’s on its shoulders that the legacy sits, fulfilling Ben Johnson’s famous expectation from his introduction that ‘he was not of an age, but for all time’ and were it not for their endeavor there are a raft of plays which we simply wouldn’t have in any form (and indeed there are couple which have been lost because they weren’t included).

There have been reprints and facsimiles in the meantime but what Bate, Eric Rasmussen and their team of editors have set out to do is present a modernised version of that original text as close as possible to what Shakespeare intended, correcting the work of the sometimes flaky printers and offering finally a sense of the state the plays were in at the time of his death. As they note, it’s impossible to have a definitive version of any play since like many play writes he would be rewriting and correcting throughout the life of the work which, along with poor handling of publication during his lifetime, some of the plays particularly King Lear and Hamlet appear with varying structures and lengths.

The plays that were included in the Folios are presented in a single column with fidelity to the acts and scenes but ignoring the locations and most of the stage directions which have been added to some editions in more recent years. The five act structure was an invention that occurred during Shakespeare’s time when productions moved inside to intimate locations and time was required to relight the candles and so those plays in which these were a later addition also include a note as to were the original breaks were. Since this is a complete works, those plays which didn’t make the cut way back when – the collaborations Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles are supplemented at the end followed by the poems and sonnets, all given the same care and attention.

Despite appearing as it should at the front of the book, the centrepiece is the general introduction which even to this fan is a revelation. Most of the dozens of biographies I’ve read or watched cover the main points of his life: son of a glove maker, decent schooling, goes to London, acts, writes, becomes a theatre owner, acts, writes some more with the backing of the Queen then King, goes into semi-retirement, maybe has a few too many to drink and dies, with plagues, theatres closures, a family and potential mistresses or boys weaving in and out. Bate includes some of this, but spends much of his time teasing out exactly what it was like for Shakespeare starting out in the business and working his way up to celebrity and unlike most of those other life stories, isn’t afraid to diminish some of the idolatry.

Comparison is made, for example, with the Hollywood scripting process, in which more often than not the text is passed amongst many hands often to the point of not resembling the original intent at all. In Shakespeare’s day it wasn’t unknown for plays already in the reparatory to be passed to some new writer in the company for a sprucing up and indeed there’s an implication here that some of his earlier plays are really just that. What set Shakespeare apart is that it was fairly rare for an actor to be carrying out this work and with an ability which would eventually lead to him authoring his own work. The aging writers of the original plays were none to happy with that actor who would presume to improve their work (especially since they wouldn’t profit from it) and even published a pamphlet to say so.

This then naturally flows into one of the best arguments I’ve seen about lone authorship; I’ve always found the suggestions that some other person could have written Shakespeare’s plays a bit specious, especially since much of it seems to stem from his ‘background’, even though the education he had as a boy filled with Latin and the like was probably far more complex than you’d find in some universities these days. As Bate notes the overwhelming evidence is that Shakespeare has to have written the plays simply because there were too many people watching him and as the number of eyewitness sources increases there would have to be a massive conspiracy at foot simply designed to cheat future scholars. It’s not unknown for people to be fronts to other writers (as portrayed in relation to the Hollywood black list in the Woody Allen film The Front) but how would it have worked in the collaborations in which the two writers must have spoken about the work and indeed rewritten each other?

Each of the plays is prefaced with a similar introduction, crucially considering a range of topics but often concentrating on a single aspect of the work rather than futily trying to create a rounded picture (there’s the excellent Rough Guide available for that kind of thing). That completes the impression that this is as much an authored as edited book, which offers the viewpoints of two scholars more interested in presenting a cohesive vision than a confusion in completeness. Although an extract from Sir Thomas Moore is here, they don’t include the newly canonised (by some) Edward III because they’re not convinced by the evidence that Shakespeare was a co-author and Arden of Faversham is similarly only given lip-service. Such material is available elsewhere (including the excellent website which accompanies the book) and would muddy what is being accomplished here – a modern edition of one of, if not the greatest book in the English language.

Even as an object this is special. It comes in a box and though the pages are thin, they’re sturdy. There's an amazing selection of stills of various RSC productions contrasting the different approaches. The impression is of a family bible but instead of the word of a god this is drama from the mind of one man (plus his sources and collaborators). You can’t help yourself – you just have to sit and hold it, turning the pages watching the verse pass by. The cover eskews the usual clichés of a late painting of the man or of Elizabethan London to tastefully give the impression of the original publication may have looked. On the shelf, nestled next to countless other complete works I’ve collected, it stands out, definitive and authoritative in contrast to the brown and black of the others. I’ll glance up at the yellow of the cover and as you might a nice car or stereo and wonder how I could possibly own it. If you don’t have a complete works in the house, this is the one to have.

To Be Or Not To Be (1942)

Hamlet played by Joseph Tura

The title of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 film offers a double meaning. Of course there’s the Hamlet reference which I’ll get to in a moment, but remembering that the film concerns the Polish occupation by Nazi Germany it’s a question and a call to arms – do we hide away in these difficult times surrender ourselves to death (not to be) or be true to ourselves and battle against what presently seems inevitable (to be)?

Within the film, that means that the group of actors continue their profession but instead of performing for an audience, they bend their skills to self preservation and fighting the oppressor, wearing disguises and improvising and generally being very convincing for all that. Of course, depending on how you’re interpreting Hamlet itself, the prince is either mad or using his acting skills himself to feign madness to avenge his father’s death.

The play’s appearance in the film is largely played for laughs. On both occasions that we glimpse the production it’s viewed from the stalls as the Polish actor Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) steps forward to deliver ‘To Be Or Not To’ on each occasion the opening line sparking the walk out of a service man which he initially suspects has something to do with his acting skills but he later discovers is the code his wife is using to let gentlemen callers that they can visit her dressing room because he’ll be on stage for a while.

The staging is fairly stereotypical, a stone castle hallway and medieval dress and we don’t have much of an idea of what the rest of the show will be like, because we don’t need to. It’s interesting to see that Tura’s Hamlet’s reading a book, not unlike Jacobi in the BBC production though he doesn’t read from it, shouting the lines instead at the prospective cuckold as he dashes for the exit. He’s not one of the greats; as one Nazi officer notes: “"Oh, yes I saw him [Tura] in 'Hamlet' once. What he did to Shakespeare we are now doing to Poland".”

The film has a cross genre appeal years ahead of its time, merging what initially looks like a fairly traditional back stage farce with elements of the spy and war movies. It is often hilarious, which drew some controversy at the time of release and the film flopped presumably because it was ‘too soon’ and the public weren’t ready for jokes about the occupation which sparked the war. What they missed is that like the play which inspired its title, the comedy and tragedy are intermixed and interchangable and the film is at its darkest when the Nazis frogmarch into Warsaw.

Words

I've had a letter...

Hello,

I am absolutely loving the Hamlet blog - the play happens to be my personal favourite so it's nice to see the Dane finally gets a blog where he can vent (or I can catch up on various versions of the show). I'm sure you're well versed on all of the Hamlet variations currently available but I did want to mention that the company for which I work is running a competition for two free tickets to Factory's presentation of Hamlet at Shakespeare's Globe Theater at midnight (the very witching time of night, perhaps?) on September 6th. It sticks to the script by only uses props provided by the audience and each cast member can play multiple roles - and which actor plays which character is decided upon by the audience as well. Should be quite interesting, I'm really looking forward to it!

If you'd like some more information about the show and the competition, you can see a listing here:
http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/competition-394/win-2-tickets-to-factorys-hamlet-430/

Otherwise, I look forward to more blogging!

Cheers,
Meaghan

Thanks Meaghan. Hope the show goes well for you and the audience. More reviews coming soon, I promise!

New Tennant in Elsinore

Have any members of the press used that headline this morning? Anyone? Either way, to save some work, here's a link to Outpost Gallifrey's round-up of reviews for David Tennant's Hamlet. Overwhelmingly positive, especially from Michael Billington of The Guardian, whose piece reads like a more articulate version of a post from this very blog. He doesn't, for example, like the cuts:

"Tennant is an active, athletic, immensely engaging Hamlet. If there is any quality I miss, it is the character's philosophical nature, and here he is not helped by the production. Following the First Quarto, Doran places "To be or not to be" before rather than after the arrival of the players: perfectly logical, except that there is something magnificently wayward about the Folio sequence in which Hamlet, having decided to test Claudius's guilt, launches into an unexpected meditation on human existence. [...] Unforgivably, Doran also cuts the lines where Hamlet says to Horatio, "Since no man knows of aught he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." Thus Tennant loses some of the most beautiful lines in all literature about acceptance of one's fate."

Nothing on the state of Fortinbras though.

Fortinbras is not in the main computer.

"Shot entirely in front of a green screen, Hamlet A.D.D. (2009) features live-action characters in an animated world."

Which could either turn out to be really fun, or ruddy awful. The actor playing the dane is both producing and directing and has William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet under his tunic. Biggest star seems to be Majel Barrett off of Star Trek as a Queen Robot who appears, I'm guessing, during The Mousetrap.

"Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better."

HAMLET (FACEBOOK NEWSFEED EDITION).

"there is no such thing as Shakespeare's Hamlet ... there are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies"

Some obligatory posts from The Guardian related to David Tennant's Hamlet. Some photos & Michael Billington picks his ten best including some screen versions in with the stage.

Ye yan (2006)

Prince Wu Luan played by Daniel Wu
Directed by Xiaogang Feng

Publicised as a re-imagining of Hamlet set in feudal China and produced in the style of such costumed martial arts epics as Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Yimou Zhang’s Hero, Xiaogang Feng’s film seems to have all of the elements of the play as though they were rewritten by someone who once saw the Mel Gibson version on television years ago. The treacherous marriage and coronation don’t happen until the middle act, and it's here also that we find something akin to The Mousetrap and Hamlet’s subsequent banishment. Most of the recognisable figures appear, though arguably the attitudes of Claudius and Gertrude have been reverse and she’s an old girlfriend of the prince rather than his mother. There are some nice tips of the hat in the production design with an opening battle in a bamboo theatre shaped like the globe and masks evoking a human skull.


The Banquet (to offer its uk title) is sumptuously languid. There certainly flashes of brilliance, when Tan Dun’s music conspires with Timmy Yip’s art direction and Li Zhang’s cinematography to produce some arresting images. Ziyi Zhang’s multi-layered performance as the Gertude figure is often wrenching and stands out from a crowd of rather dower blokes. But the computer generated shots of the palace and landscape look dated and the fight sequences are pretty unspectacular in comparison to those featured in Yimou Zhang’s films, and most damagingly, the story simply isn’t as compelling or mysterious as it could be. Partly this is as a result of trying to move someone else’s narrative furniture around, but it can’t quite decide who the audience should be sympathising with.

Feng has clearly found a muse in Ziyi Zhang but his visual worship of her unbalances our attention away from what Shakespeare knew was important, Hamlet (or in this case Wu Luan)’s vengeance. It’s not necessarily a fair comparison, but when Kurasawa took an interest in the Bard, his adaptations faithfully followed the original plot and whenever his dialogue couldn’t evoke Shakespeare’s poetry he let the photography fill in the metaphoric blanks. In that way, the characters remained psychologically complex even as we gasped at the wind in the trees and the sand storms in the desert. It’s interesting to note that when Akira tackled Hamlet, he transposed it to present day. You can’t help but wonder if Feng hadn’t ignored Shakespeare completely he might have produced a more interesting and to be less boring film.

19 Michael Sheen

Michael Sheen as Hamlet
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer

At the dawn of the new millennium, the BBC decided to commemorate the occasion with a series of radio productions of Shakespeare's plays. Some were critical of the project since the bard has hardly been ignored by Radio 3 and in the announcement there didn’t seem to be anything to suggest that these would be doing anything too out of the ordinary. When broadcast most were well received, especially since the casting suggested that the producers were looking to attract the young audience seeking accessible productions after the film cycle which ran in the late 90s beginning with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.

The risk in the inevitable Hamlet was the casting of Michael Sheen who though respected for his stage work had yet to the hit the mainstream and define his career playing real people – Kenneth Williams, Brian Clough and of course Tony Blair. Anyone expecting that distinctive impression offering the famous lines will be disappointed. Sheen here as a much deeper cadence with a Welsh lilt, far more actorly and perhaps slightly mannered.

In his interpretation, Hamlet is already directionless at the opening of the play, apparently going back to college because there’s not much for him in Elsinore. His instability is given purpose by the visitation of the ghost (an understandably bitter, angry presence) the revenge for the bloody deed offering a course of action, almost a career. In carrying out his plan, he’s efficient but flamboyant and very much not mad. There’s a logic to his actions and it's only in the central soliloquy that the fear returns (and oddly this about as Blair as Sheen becomes).

All of which said, I’m not sure Sheen really wins here. His approach to what’s one of the most familiar scripts in drama is to ride over the famous lines, which he should of course, but he also doesn’t seem to be enjoying the language or the poetry. He’s more relaxed in the prose sections, certainly, and when Hamlet is in his best humours. But unlike Simon Russell-Beale, whose audio performance I loved, I found myself unable to empathise with him, or really believe in what he’s saying. I do suspect that he loses a lot of his presence in audio and I'd love to see what he'd do with it on stage. There’s no denying he settles down towards the end – he’s especially good in the gravedigger scene and the ‘Readiness is all is’ is heartbreaking.

Except that by then the rest of the production has begun to drag. This is the full text from the second Quarto and it certainly feels it. It's perhaps too accessible, designed to be as inoffensive as possible so as not to alienate a general and educational audience (it's a co-production with the Open University). At best, the production is doing some interesting things with the private and public face. David Bradley’s delicious Polonius is a different, more vital figure in his office sending Reynaldo to spy on his son than addressing Claudius (Kenneth Cranham) and Gertrude (Juliet Stephenson).

Elsewhere, the producers are largely leaving the interpretation up to the listener, and my taste has always been for directors and actors with a clear agenda, but this doesn't seem to have one. It also can't quite tell how epic it wants to be. Kenneth Cranham spends much of the time regally declaring the text whilst the likes of Stephenson and (the very young sounding Ophelia) Ellie Beaven are enjoying the chance to intimately address the audience and often in the same scene.

The simple soundscape lacks atmosphere and is a touch confused. Inconsistently, in the aforementioned (often cut) Reynaldo scene, typewriters clatter away in the background, yet everything else is clearly taking place in an echoing castle and other characters are transported by horse drawn carriage. Which should be interesting, I suppose, but acts as distractions stopping you from being taken in by the drama. The music is boring too – opening with a bit of plain song then drifting into something akin to electronic lounge music but again without a clear direction. The only truly great moment is when the mime before The Mousetrap is presented mickey mousing on a plonky piano of the kind synonymous with silent film; if only the rest of Mortimer's presentation was that distinctive.

Interview: David Tennant talks Hamlet.

TV David Tennant appeared on The Andrew Marr show this morning to talk about playing Hamlet amongst other things and here's a transcript. Believe me, it was as excruciating to watch as it is to read:

"ANDREW MARR: Yeah. You're, you're a Shakespearian actor, have been for some time. But Hamlet is the big one.

DAVID TENNANT: I suppose. I'm trying not to look at it that way at the moment. Just another play isn't it Andrew?

ANDREW MARR: You're going to, well you're going to bring - yeah except you - and just another audience will be a, probably the RSC will get audiences it doesn't normally have for its productions because you're doing Hamlet I would have thought. Lots of Trekkies in there ... Who'ees, Who'ees.

DAVID TENNANT: Well there will be Trekkies cos we've got Patrick Stewart in the cast as well. But I don't know. I think, I mean I think Ian McKellan was there last year doing King Lear.

ANDREW MARR: Yes.

DAVID TENNANT: So I guess he probably has an audience from ..

ANDREW MARR: Yes.

DAVID TENNANT: .. Lord of the Rings that maybe ..

ANDREW MARR: But it's, I mean every, I mean, I mean people will be watching to see - I've got an Olivier, a little clip of Olivier's Hamlet which is ..

DAVID TENNANT: Oh right.

ANDREW MARR: .. yeah let's just have a quick look at that.

VT: Olivier in Hamlet.
[editor's note: which by the way amounted to a photograph and audio from the film of Larry saying 'To be or not to be, That is the question."]

DAVID TENNANT: I'll do it like that then.

ANDREW MARR: You'll do it like that?

DAVID TENNANT: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: So we've got it sorted?

DAVID TENNANT: Yeah, that's fine.

You can see the weird chemistry for the next on the BBC's iPlayer if you're in the UK. Spot the moment also when Marr, having called Doctor Who fans Trekkies he forgets the name of The Doctor's current assistant. [via]

White-out

If I pause my dvd player on that moment in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky and sit looking at it for just over an hour, can I count this film as well? It seems pointless buying the Region One edition just to get, as DVD Verdict says: "an hour of a white screen with no sound or change."

"stark raving sane"

It's with a certain inevitability that I'm linking to this article from The Times in which theatre critic Benedict Nightingale broods over which Hamlet was the best. Simon Russell Beale comes out quite well all round. The critics says he's seen forty and reviewed thirty-five. I really need to pull me finger out.

Star Trek: The Conscience of the King (1966)

Hamlet played by Marc Grady Adams.
Directed by Gerd Oswald.

The Enterprise is diverted to some random planet when a childhood friend of Kirk’s thinks that Karidian, the leader of a group of travelling players isn’t just one of the great tragedians of the period but also an ex-politician, Kodos, who brought genocide to half of the citizen of the colony which was under his care. All signs point to that being the case, but even though the Captain was at said colony and saw the murderer, he can’t quite convince himself that they are the same man and so it goes on, with Kirk largely in the role of Hamlet, a man who were not quite sure hasn’t gone slightly unhinged as his memories catch up with him.

This was the first time amongst many, many occasions that Star Trek and Shakespeare met and it’s a very odd beast. On the one hand it features a scene which wouldn't look out of place in one of the histories between the trinity of lead characters, Spock and McCoy’s confrontation of Kirk regarding his actions presents one of the most ambiguous conversations about their friendship as the Captain is unusually guarded about his private life with his first officer who sees his job as not only to protect his superior officer, but also the crew from his foibles – in other words if they’re not compatible, the ship is the priority.

On the other it has all of the complexity of Midsummer Murders or Morse, the conclusion, so obviously grasping towards an authentic Shakespearean tragedy, ultimately comes across as that moment when the John’s Nettle or Thaw discover that Richard Briers’s postman character was a war criminal whose been offing the few people who knew it. I think both of those series have had their Shakespeare episodes, but neither of them offered such an incongruous mix of styles, trying to wedge theatre into the gap between space and opera, presenting scenes from Macbeth and Hamlet on an alien world or star ship along with lashings of garbled blank verse.

Fittingly, the scene from Hamlet happens towards the end as Kirk’s conscience finally reveals itself. In the Enterprise’s theatre (who knew the ship had one of those) against what looks like a school panto set, Karidian’s daughter gives a brief introduction to some assembled personnel, and then after cutaway to some other business, we’re confronted by the ghostly Hamlet snr (Karidian behind a masque giving an intentionally mannered performance) imparting to Hamlet the ‘I am your father’s spirit’ speech. I think the resonance were supposed to recognise is that recent events have resurrected some of the ghosts of the past and as Karidian speaks the words he’s coming to terms with what he’s done.

Hamlet is played by Marc Grady Adams and his job is largely to look surprised and not upstage the lead guest actor, one Arnold Moss (pictured) who two decades before this episode was recorded appeared as Prospero in The Tempest on Broadway for a hundred shows. But what I’d really love to know is whether Mr. Shatner ever played the Dane and if, please god, it was ever recorded. Of course some of his fascination would later be recorded on wax, a suitably off kilter version of ‘To Be or Not To Be’ cropping up on The Transformed Man, nestling next to ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. But that’s an analysis for another time, Captain.

'Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare' by M.M. Mahood

What’s perhaps unique about Hamlet amongst all of Shakespeare’s plays is that despite very much having a central role, the preponderance of smaller roles means that should the director choose to, it can appear as much of an ensemble piece as some of the comedy or history plays. Most stagings however, especially in the theatre, to bring the play down to a ‘manageable’ length, generally cut many of these parts, either handing off some of their dialogue to other characters or omitting their contributions entirely.

Mahmood’s book doesn’t feature a chapter dedicated to the play, but a general thesis does emerge from the few examples included that a director cuts there ‘bit parts’ at his peril and that despite appearances many of them carry rather more narrative or thematic resonance than they’re given credit for. In other words, Hamlet doesn’t really work as ghost story unless Barnado's fear introduces some much needed atmosphere up front.

The most interesting discussion is in relation to Fortinbras. I can’t think of a production I’ve loved which hasn’t included the Norwegian’s presence; as Mahood notes, without Fortinbras it becomes a different play -- a family drama, almost a claustrophobic chamber piece lacking the grand arena of international politics and ironic ticking clock of the impending invasion at the close. I also think you lose extra emotional drag that both of these sons are dealing with the choices of their father with Fortinbras arguably holding the better hand.

The role Osric plays in the final scene is also looked at, and in particular whether he’s the fop he’s most commonly portrayed as. Quite rightly, the author – with help from the likes of Dover Wilson suggests that he could be as duplicitous as Claudius, since its under his guidance that Hamlet agrees to the duel and it’s as sword master that the poisoned weapon makes it into Laertes hands. I’m not so sure – I’ve always thought that Hamlet fights because he’s recognised that he’s reached the end game and this will hasten the inevitable – to think otherwise weakens him somehow.

Three Times

A Likely Story (great blog name by the way) has a useful review of the latest Arden editions of the play -- or rather all three of them. As I've discovered elsewhere, some modern researchers believe that each was simply a version of the play at a different moment in its life and to conflate them as usually occurs still doesn't give a clearer idea of what Shakespeare intended. [via]

New BBC Complete Works

Shakespeare Sam Mendes and the BBC are to do another complete works of Shakespeare in a co-production with HBO which'll cost in the region of $100 million. Possibly. Seems like the perfect opportunity to film David Tennant's Hamlet, surely?

Prince of Jutland (1994)

Amled played by Christian Bale.
Directed by Gabriel Axel.

This is just one of those occasions when you really can’t believe quite what's unfolding in front of you. That someone wrote the thing, someone decided to direct it, a deal was struck, financing found and then the script was sent around and attracted this cast who then agreed to go on location for principal photography, the footage was edited, a score written, a prints struck then dvds and at no point did anyone notice that in fact they’d created a monster, the kind of entertainment which is unintentionally funny more than on purpose and deserves at least a cult audience just for the ludicrousness of it all. In other words, don’t get too excited. This is not a chance to see Christian Bale play Hamlet, at least not the Shakespearean iteration. You do, however, get to see him eat a tree branch, one leaf at a time. But more on that later.

In this, Axel who’d previously offered the wonderful Babette’s Feast attempts to film the ancient Danish legends that Shakespeare apparently based his play on. As the film opens a caption heralds that this is based on the original writing Saxo Grammaticus, whose Gesta Danorum was the source of the tales of Amled (isn’t the Wikipedia amazing?). The theory has it that, Shakespeare looked at this material at one remove via an earlier play, usually described as the Ur-Hamlet and actually what Axel seems to have done here is draw together elements of Grammaticus with that earlier play (or what’s known of it), Shakespeare and oddly Return of the Jedi (one or two scenes are oddly similar). In other words its about as authentic as Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur which was also reputed to be of some kind of ancient about Camelot but somehow still managed to feature a Druidic version of Merlin.

The story then, like the Kurosawa, Kaurismaki and Disney has many of the familiar elements in not quite the right order. It seems a bit pointless analysing how the two differ since it really is worth seeing both if you’re a Hamlet and film fan and to deny you the surprise of how the narrative plays out would rob you of one its few genuine pleasures. Lets just say that at about fifty minutes in you’ll be wondering what is going to happen for the remainder of the running time; the answer reminded me of the way that television theme tunes would be released as singles and the composer would be called upon to fill the gap and would simply add in some unexpected solo or wacky jazz version that was totally unlike the tune that everyone knows -- track down the long versions of Grandstand, Rainbow or The Archers to see what I mean. Let's just say is that Fortinbras is here in spirit and spoiling for a rumble. And played by Brian Glover.

Anyway back to Bale and his tree eating. I’m probably not spoiling too much by saying that when Amled discovers his uncle murdered his father that his only recourse is to fain madness. In Shakespeare that pretty much amounts to some shouting at Ophelia, calling her Dad a fish monger and all the talking to himself in between. Here the future Bruce Wayne, his floppy long hair has to bark like a dog, crow like a cock and eat wood (and leaves). But he does it with such conviction that you’re entirely convinced this is the best strategy under the circumstances. When he’s expectedly revealed to be sane (in the arms of a naked wench) Bale steps up his game and he becomes charismatic, noble and everything you’d want from a king, cunning too, and certainly not the ditherer that ‘our’ Hamlet is sometimes portrayed as. Bale is another reason to watch - he steals almost every scene that he’s in and like Welles in his radio version of the play, the actor suddenly presents the on-screen persona that we’d find later in everything from The Prestige to indeed Batman.

Elsewhere, it’s madder than a bag of spanners but gloriously so in that special way that these things often are. Much of the fun is obtained from seeing actors, like Bale who would go on to be known for far more illustrious projects doing some very unexpected things. Well, yes Mirren’s back as this show’s version of Gertrude, and goes naked again -- but by this time she was already film the Prime Suspects for television so this was a very curious career choice and she’s not all that bad. Gabriel Byrne hadn’t get gone stellar with The Usual Suspects, although he generally plays Fenge (Claudius) in the same mould as Dean Keaton and there’s even s moment when he does the finger pondering thing which crops up in the closing montage of Byran Singer’s film to make him look suspicious. Tom Wilkinson’s in here too as Hardvendel (Hamlet Snr) which should indicate that it’s not for long. Oh and Kate Beckinsale too as Ethel (Ophelia) but doesn’t do much other than look longingly at Bale.

Now take a look at this tableau:



That's Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting), Mark Williams (The Fast Show) and Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings & King Kong). Tony Haygarth (Bleak House) and David Bateson (The Hitman games). And some beards.

The music is by Per Nørgård. Per Nørgård is one of Denmark’s most famous composers -- his work is in the international repertory and what’s here is remarkable. Unfortunately at no time does it match the visuals and some of the more unintentionally funny moments are when the five above (in clothes) are striding purposefully around the village (they couldn’t afford a castle in those days) to a soundtrack which indicates that they might as well be attacking Norway. Fans of Murray Gold’s soundtrack to the first series of new Doctor Who would be well served here as the chords clash in at random moments. And the whole film is like that -- just as it settles into a rhythm, there’s always some bizarre bit of editing, fake wig action, wavering accent. extremely odd acting choice (see Byrne fake cry), piece of set design or crowd scene which breaks the drama. The closing shot, which might be entirely accurate, might have looked good on paper, is totally ludicrous, as a collection of extras and many of the principles are called upon to pat their chest in unison, the sound of fist on cloak being the final sound we hear.

18 Orson Welles

Hamlet played by Orson Welles.
Directed by Orson Welles.

Orson Welles was one of the great Shakespeareans of the 20th Century. His book Everybody’s Shakespeare examined the potential the bard had to reach the popular audience and he strove for much of his life to produce some great interpretations of the canon and sometimes succeeded. In the end, only his Macbeth would have a relatively unhindered passage to the screen but even that was compromised because it was produced for a tin-pan alley studio more used to producing westerns and unable to provide the budget his vision required.

He would go on to complete just two other screen adaptations -- Othello and Chimes At Midnight (a conflagration of Falstaff’s story from Henry IV parts one & two and sections of Merry Wives of Windsor) -- but on both occasions production spanned years, with shooting occurring only when financing was available from Welles own pocket as he provided voiceovers and performances in films he cared little for. Both of those films are messy curiosities, snatches of brilliance mixed with failure, but nevertheless inventive even as he had to recast parts in mid-flow. Desdemona is obviously portrayed by at least three actresses, two of which were overdubbed in the final mix.

On stage he found rather more success and his voodoo Macbeth at the Federal Theatre was considered a triumph and it was with some amazement I discovered that he did indeed also play Hamlet albeit in production of an hour’s duration for the Columbia Broadcasting Company’s Columbia Workshop, a series of experimental radio dramas broadcast in 1936 just two years before his own Mercury Theatre would receive a regular spot on the same network ( which is when the War of the World incident occurred). The production, such as it is was broadcast in two parts, firstly on September 19, 1936 and then after what must be the longest interval in theatrical history the second part appeared on November 14, 1936, two months later. Judging by the introduction to the first broadcast, the second was by no means certain:

“In deciding to present an abbreviated version of Hamlet the Columbia workshop found itself facing a considerable dilemma. Would it be feasible we wondered to give merely the plot in our short space of time, or should we concentrate on certain well-known passages, and let the story proceed confusingly. Our final decision was this: to present the first two acts of the play, presenting whenever possible, the most notable scenes in their entirety. And giving you, we hope a clear dramatic statement of the causes of Hamlet’s tragedy.”

The method utilised by Welles in his production is to have actors speak with rapidity and concentrate solely on those scenes featuring Hamlet, his adaptation being a psychological study in revenge. After presenting much of the opening scene on the battlements, the focus shifts almost totally the prince; once Hamlet agrees not to go to Wittenberg, Horatio is quick to advise him of the ghost who quickly appears minutes later to be followed by the fishmonger and the players closing with a delicious cliffhanger -- ‘The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ The only interruption is the introduction of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, presumably because as I gather these plays where presented live it would have given Welles, who has the dramatic weight a moment to mop his brow and take a drink of water.

Brilliantly, Welles cuts Ophelia and Laertes altogether. For all we know, Polonius has no children and is merely Claudius’s adviser. This allows us to concentrate on Hamlet’s emotional state and Welles’s performance is a tour de force, despite being pretty much alike with every other performance Welles has given. It’s difficult throughout not to think of Charles Foster Kane or Harry Lime, but this isn’t because he lacks range -- he does generality and darkness particularly well, and indeed it’s amazing hear that five years before Kane brought him to a (slightly) wider audience his acting persona was already so clearly defined. The only disappointment is that without Ophelia there isn’t the nunnery scene and without the nunnery we do not get to here Welles’s version of ‘To Be Or Not To Be’; but these are supposed to be ‘experimental’ productions and cutting the play’s most famous speech is certainly that.

Then two months later, in the second half, and I can’t believe I’m criticising Orson Welles, it all goes horribly wrong. The pace is markedly even faster in the second segment and subtlety goes out of the window. Unlike the first broadcast, if you weren't already familiar with the plot, despite the more detailed expository voiceover you've little clue of how the narrative pieces fit together; it ultimately descends into a melodramatic soup and if I was someone who’d never heard Shakespeare’s work before I’d probably be of the opinion that this is exactly how I feared it would be like. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the second half as being part of the same production because Welles no doubt thought these broadcasts would have the same ephemeral quality as auditorium theatre living only in the memory of the listener and certainly wouldn’t have expected them to be unified one after the other. He might not even have been expecting that he would have to fit the last three acts when much of the meat of the play occurs into another half an hour.

But even considered on its own as a separate entity it fails, firstly by falling into the trap of doing exactly what was threatened in the introduction to the first part of giving ‘merely the plot in our short space of time’ and secondly because the sometimes subtle performance Welles gave in the opening segment which drew the audiences in gives way to pure ham as he desperately tries to give the character some psychological depth in such a short space of time. As adapter too he spends far too much time over The Mousetrap, perhaps because of its theatrical resonance which leads to the likes of the scenes in the bed chamber being skipped over lightly, the climax with the exception of ‘The readiness is all’ and Hamlet’s death speech being a generally incoherent mess.

The other problem is the sudden appearance of Ophelia and Laertes, unconvincingly knitted back into the story. The genius of losing them from the opening two acts creates a problem because they are so critical to the climax (Hamlet can hardly have duel with himself, although as the Coranado film demonstrates that is sometimes worth a try). Ophelia first drops in during a quick exchange before The Mousetrap and Laertes even later in the narration upon his return to Denmark looking for his father. There’s no emotional connection Polonius or Hamlet though and so when the prince desperately says that he loved Ophelia it comes out of the blue, in a way that’s not unlike soap opera. When Ophelia goes mad we haven’t enough time to grieve.

Such criticism should be taken lightly though when faced with the fact that this was Welles trying to frame Shakespeare’s tragedy for an undoubtedly intelligent audience that might never have heard Shakespeare before. As with all of the other attempts to produce a version of the play with at least three hours of the action missing there are bound to be compromises and the first half really is excellent. In addition, how marvelous to be able to listen to Welles’s adaptation seventy years after its broadcast; the version I listened to was obviously recorded onto LP during the original radio broadcast and so as well as the interference from what sounded like a shaky AM reception there’s also the pops and scratches of vinyl giving the recording an wonderfully atmospheric quality. The music, mostly fanfares, was produced by Bernard Hermann who would go on to provide a score for Kane as well as many of Alfred Hitchcock films. You can’t ignore the fact that this is a piece of radio, theatrical and to a degree film history and on that level it’s priceless [via Wellesnet where there is a link so that you can hear and enjoy this production yourself].

17 Tony Meyer

Hamlet played by David Meyer.
Hamlet played by Tony Meyer.
Directed by Celestino Coronada.

Balanced precariously between art piece and feature film, Celestino Coronada’s Hamlet is not for the faint hearted. Sometimes described as ‘The Naked Hamlet’, it cuts the poetry to ribbons has little regard for the story (Ophelia’s madness is shown even though Polonius’s death isn’t) and instead sets about emphasizing every shred of the apparent homoerotic and incestuous subtext present in the play almost to the point of parody -- no sorry -- crashing straight into parody and galloping even further. It’s one of the most difficult interpretations of the play I’ve had to deal with so far and between my shouts of ’Oh come on’ and ‘Oh for goodness sake’ (substituting the g-word for the f-word more often than not) it’s the first time since the abbreviated National Youth Theatre Production that I was happy to get to the end of it.

Obviously it’s of its time and that being the case I’m very pleased that was too young to notice what that time was like. The mood is set from the off when Hamlet is shown nude on a slab being visited by his father, also bollock naked, to deliver the story of his murder. It’s not clear whether the man is supposed to be a ghost or in his son’s dreams but what is clear is that implication is that something rotten was going on in the state of Denmark even before Hamlet Snr’s murder. From then on we’re greeted by an approach to the play which is on the one-hand sub-Jarman on the other sub-Passolini (the film is dedicated to Pier) and is mostly the kind of thing which would be shown late on Channel 4 when it first started, probably with a red-triangle slapped on the front and as a lead in to Naked Yoga.

Funded by the Royal College of Art in London and filmed on a shoe-string in a darkened studio with the acoustics of a community centre (throughout you can hear doors opening and closing and people chatting off camera) there isn’t much room for scenes changes and most of its costume design and presentation takes elements of the burlesque and camp, silk costumes in primary colours (when people are wearing them) and hair and make-up perhaps influenced by Restoration stage craft, mixed with the sensibilities of the seventies. Frankly, Quentin Crisp as Polonius looks like Batman’s Joker all green hair and white face paint and Barry Stanton's Claudius seems to have wandered in from Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax video.

There is a good idea at the centre of all this though. Coronado’s casting of the brothers Tony & David Meyer (which means I can add two Hamlets to the list this time) allows them to emphasize the dual nature of Hamlet’s character playing the obviously mad and feigning madness versions off against one another and sometimes they appear in a scene together, fighting each other for supremacy. In this production ’Now is the very witching time of night’ becomes a two-hander the two actors demonstrating that Hamlet is very much in two minds. Unfortunately this is all undermined because clearly one of the brothers (it’s difficult to tell which) is clearly a better actor than the other and they also both have the extra weight of having to portray Laertes and it all becomes desperately confusing.

Given the circumstances of the production, you can’t really blame the actors for being inconsistent and just plain bad but the the Emmy, Bafta and Oscar winning Helen Mirren saddled with playing both Ophelia and Gertrude (that duology again, hey) is just awful, blankly regarding the other actors and doubtless wondering what made her sign up to this. Quentin Crisp looks equally bored and it’s unfortunate that with all of the emphasis on symbolism and imagery that the director has forgotten to take care of his cast. Coronado is more orgasmic over the possibilities inherent in the then new video mixing technology with a montage sequence which resembles a Top of the Pops Pans People filler directed by Ken Russell and each and every scene features some kind of super imposing of one character over another. This was a year after the premiere of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody video and it shows.

Obviously this was not created as an exercise in drama -- like Stoppard’s fifteen minute distillation, the audience isn’t supposed to be able to follow the narrative in a traditional way. It’s the filmic equivalent of an academic essay written for the International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies and I'm sure just that kind of essay could even be written about the film explaining the emblematic relevance of everything. In the end though, the whole fancy leaves a nasty taste of misogyny in the mouth; the inference is that none of this craziness would have happened if Gertrude and Ophelia hadn’t been quite such tasty propositions and although the thing ends with the naked bodies of the two acting brothers (one playing Laertes this time not that it matters by then) writhing around one another as the duel is substituted for some Greco Roman Wrestling in one of the worst examples of confused homo-erotic testosterone since Kirk fought a shirtless clone of himself in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within. Mirren is variously uncomfortably stroked, massaged and snuffed, her make-up smudged all over her face in some kind of ur-version (or more precisely ugh-version) of torture porn. Dreadful.

16 David Meyer

Hamlet played by David Meyer.
Hamlet played by Tony Meyer.
Directed by Celestino Coronada.

Balanced precariously between art piece and feature film, Celestino Coronada’s Hamlet is not for the faint hearted. Sometimes described as ‘The Naked Hamlet’, it cuts the poetry to ribbons has little regard for the story (Ophelia’s madness is shown even though Polonius’s death isn’t) and instead sets about emphasizing every shred of the apparent homoerotic and incestuous subtext present in the play almost to the point of parody -- no sorry -- crashing straight into parody and galloping even further. It’s one of the most difficult interpretations of the play I’ve had to deal with so far and between my shouts of ’Oh come on’ and ‘Oh for goodness sake’ (substituting the g-word for the f-word more often than not) it’s the first time since the abbreviated National Youth Theatre Production that I was happy to get to the end of it.

Obviously it’s of its time and that being the case I’m very pleased that was too young to notice what that time was like. The mood is set from the off when Hamlet is shown nude on a slab being visited by his father, also bollock naked, to deliver the story of his murder. It’s not clear whether the man is supposed to be a ghost or in his son’s dreams but what is clear is that implication is that something rotten was going on in the state of Denmark even before Hamlet Snr’s murder. From then on we’re greeted by an approach to the play which is on the one-hand sub-Jarman on the other sub-Passolini (the film is dedicated to Pier) and is mostly the kind of thing which would be shown late on Channel 4 when it first started, probably with a red-triangle slapped on the front and as a lead in to Naked Yoga.

Funded by the Royal College of Art in London and filmed on a shoe-string in a darkened studio with the acoustics of a community centre (throughout you can hear doors opening and closing and people chatting off camera) there isn’t much room for scenes changes and most of its costume design and presentation takes elements of the burlesque and camp, silk costumes in primary colours (when people are wearing them) and hair and make-up perhaps influenced by Restoration stage craft, mixed with the sensibilities of the seventies. Frankly, Quentin Crisp as Polonius looks like Batman’s Joker all green hair and white face paint and Barry Stanton's Claudius seems to have wandered in from Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax video.

There is a good idea at the centre of all this though. Coronado’s casting of the brothers Tony & David Meyer (which means I can add two Hamlets to the list this time) allows them to emphasize the dual nature of Hamlet’s character playing the obviously mad and feigning madness versions off against one another and sometimes they appear in a scene together, fighting each other for supremacy. In this production ’Now is the very witching time of night’ becomes a two-hander the two actors demonstrating that Hamlet is very much in two minds. Unfortunately this is all undermined because clearly one of the brothers (it’s difficult to tell which) is clearly a better actor than the other and they also both have the extra weight of having to portray Laertes and it all becomes desperately confusing.

Given the circumstances of the production, you can’t really blame the actors for being inconsistent and just plain bad but the the Emmy, Bafta and Oscar winning Helen Mirren saddled with playing both Ophelia and Gertrude (that duology again, hey) is just awful, blankly regarding the other actors and doubtless wondering what made her sign up to this. Quentin Crisp looks equally bored and it’s unfortunate that with all of the emphasis on symbolism and imagery that the director has forgotten to take care of his cast. Coronado is more orgasmic over the possibilities inherent in the then new video mixing technology with a montage sequence which resembles a Top of the Pops Pans People filler directed by Ken Russell and each and every scene features some kind of super imposing of one character over another. This was a year after the premiere of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody video and it shows.

Obviously this was not created as an exercise in drama -- like Stoppard’s fifteen minute distillation, the audience isn’t supposed to be able to follow the narrative in a traditional way. It’s the filmic equivalent of an academic essay written for the International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies and I'm sure just that kind of essay could even be written about the film explaining the emblematic relevance of everything. In the end though, the whole fancy leaves a nasty taste of misogyny in the mouth; the inference is that none of this craziness would have happened if Gertrude and Ophelia hadn’t been quite such tasty propositions and although the thing ends with the naked bodies of the two acting brothers (one playing Laertes this time not that it matters by then) writhing around one another as the duel is substituted for some Greco Roman Wrestling in one of the worst examples of confused homo-erotic testosterone since Kirk fought a shirtless clone of himself in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within. Mirren is variously uncomfortably stroked, massaged and snuffed, her make-up smudged all over her face in some kind of ur-version (or more precisely ugh-version) of torture porn. Dreadful.

15 John Dougall

Hamlet played by John Dougall.
Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan.

So from Hamlet in an hour, to half an hour and now a production in half even than that time. Tom Stoppard’s Fifteen Minute Hamlet is excerpted from his longer 1976 play, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, the former section of which is an intellectual exercise in demonstrating the schism between words and context. Three school children, speaking in a new language ‘Dogg’ attempt to put on a production of Hamlet, with this being their resulting production, a collection of excerpts from the major scenes and famous speeches mostly keeping the narrative sense of the piece. Unlike those other short forms though, this is played for laughs and no attempt has been made to construct a story lucid enough to be understandable a novice or someone approaching the play for the first time.

It would be pointless to list all of the omissions, except to say that The Players get but one line, there isn’t time to see Laertes off and that we hear more of mad Ophelia than Ophelia the sane. Rosencrantz and Guidenstern are only mentioned in Hamlet’s letter to Horatio reporting their death. Amazingly, he does manage to cram in Fortinbras though and spends a couple of minutes over the fight sequence, presumably because when staged this would still provide the thrilling conclusion on stage. It’s worth noting too that of the themes he chooses for his narrative through line (such as it is), the emphasis is on the quick marriage of Hamlet mother to his uncle -- many of the lines which aren’t ‘well known’ refer to that.

Then at close of the first run around (which actually lasts thirteen minutes), and after some appreciation from an audience, the play is repeated, in an encore lasting but a two minutes; a whirlwind, there’s scarcely time for anything but Hamlet gets most of the wordage and it only features the actors who would be on stage for the finale. I was reminded of The Last Night of the Proms, the ever quickening tempo during Pomp and Circumstance in which the conductor and orchestra are trying to catch the promenaders out.

This production was broadcast as part of BBC Radio's Three and Four’s Stoppard season in June and July 2007 and since it works so pacefully the radio, I can’t imagine how it might be accomplished on stage. Produced much in the same style as the BBC Millenium productions, weighted with atmospheric sound effects and orchestral music it’s certainly a passionate rendition and through Eoin O'Callaghan's direction importantly shows that in cutting, Stoppard still managed to give each of the characters and so the actors a moment to savour.

What that means is that amazingly it is possible to say that none of the actors embarrasses themselves and that John Dougal’s is a very lucid Hamlet, brooding when he needs to be, his delivery of what’s left of ‘The Readiness is all’ just perfect. It does have a touch of the Olivier’s, but with so little time and so few words to develop a psychological profile for his version of the prince he’s bound to pick a tried and tested model. The cast work so well together, that it’s a shame that all we’ll ever hear of them is in this fifteen minute fragment -- I certainly would have liked to have heard what Jasmine Callan would make of Ophelia over a longer period, Nitin Ganatra’s Horatio too.