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So, when I heard back in 2001 that the National Theatre's production of Hamlet had also been invited by the Arizona Theatre Company to perform in their facilities, I thought I had better take the opportunity to see it or I'd find myself a few months later, reading the Shakespeare Bulletin (the old one) and wishing I'd had the sense to go see it while it was within a few hundred miles of my home. I had heard some negative comments about it, particularly about Simon Russell Beale as Hamlet, but I considered the source of those comments and reminded myself that I had seen Beale in other things and really appreciated him, so it didn't take me long to buy my ticket, and then I called a friend who lives near Phoenix and asked if I could sleep overnight on her couch.
So that is how I came to be at the Thursday night performance of the National Theatre's Hamlet in Phoenix at the Herberger Theatre. I had a fabulous time, and afterwards I drove back to my friend's house, where she let me sleep in the guest room on an actual bed, and where I stayed up for about another two hours writing down everything I could remember about the production.
The Herberger has a proscenium arch stage and seats about 815 in an orchestra section and a balcony that curves around to the sides where there are boxes that seat perhaps six to eight, although I didn't see many people in the boxes the night I went, and in the ones that were occupied, there were only two or three people each. My own seat was about 3/4 of the way back in the orchestra section, on the aisle.
After the play, the audience was invited to stay for a discussion session, led by David Goldstein (artistic director of the Arizona Theatre Co) and including Stephen Wrentmore (staff director for the National Theatre), Simon Russell Beale (Hamlet), and Sara Kestelman (Gertrude). About 40 people stayed for this discussion, which included a Q&A where Wrentmore, Beale, and Kestelman gave insights into the production.
The play ran about 3 hours 15 minutes, with a 20-minute interval. All of the Fortinbras material was cut, partly for considerations of time, but also because the director (John Caird) wanted to take all the politics out of it and make it a family tragedy.
The curtain was opened as the audience entered. The set consisted of neatly ordered stacks of old travel trunks and large suitcases of various colors and styles (some with straps, some with large locks, some trunks with rounded tops, some flat). Four of these stacks, about the same height and evenly spaced, looked like 10-foot-high columns along the back of the stage. There were two shorter stacks on either side and some miscellaneous trunks arranged in a semicircle around the stage for seating. The actors sometimes used the space between the trunks for exits and entrances. Wrentmore told us that the trunks had two meanings. First, they represented the baggage we all carry around in our lives. The neat arrangement of the trunks became slowly less ordered throughout the first part of the play until, at the death of Polonius, he staggered against one of the columns and knocked it over. By the end of the play, the trunks had no discernible arrangement, except that the semicircle reappeared at the very end. The second significance of the trunks - and Wrentmore said this was more of a humorous representation - was that the trunks were those of a traveling band of actors, there to tell a story. (I have to say that, obtuse as I am about things symbolic, I didn't get either meaning during the play. I'm like a child that way: "Ooh, look! Pretty trunks!")
Up above (about ten feet over the actors' heads) were 15 or so chandeliers with electric candles in them, and a cross about four feet high that was lowered during Claudius' chapel scene. Most of the lighting came from these chandeliers, or seemed to; consequently, the whole play was, for the most part, dimly lit - too dim for me. There were too many shadows on the actors' faces and it frequently made it hard to see their expressions. Wrentmore explained that the designer (Tim Hatley) tried to represent three divisions: the chandeliers were the Heavens, the Ghost's voice ("Swear!") coming from below represented Hell, and this Earth - where we are now, our existence - was the space in between where the actors performed. (I didn't pick up on that, either.)
There was pre-recorded music used sparingly during the production, but not sparingly enough. At times (and I can't remember exactly when they used it), it was intrusive and even disruptive, making it hard to hear what the actors were saying. The only really good music was that performed live by three musicians right after the Mousetrap.
The play began with all the actors sitting on the trunks in the first semicircle around Horatio, who knelt in the middle as if he were the storyteller. Then one actor stood up and cried out, "Who's there?" and another stood and shouted, "Nay, answer me", and then there was some confusion as all the actors stood and crisscrossed their way over the stage and filed off while the dialogue continued. The ghost (Sylvester Morand) came drifting on. His appearance was very effective - sort of a glowing bluish-white figure gliding through his scenes. Incidentally, when Hamlet first saw him in 1.4, the ghost gestured and opened his mouth, but with no sound, and it looked very creepy. But, when he began to talk to Hamlet, all his scariness and other-worldliness vanished like dew before the sun. He sounded much too matter-of-fact as a ghost. The same actor played the Player King, and I thought he did much better at that.
Polonius (Peter Blythe, who also played the Grave-digger) was funny: not the doddering fool, not the over-manipulative, conniving counselor, but somewhere in between. As Laertes was leaving for Paris, Polonius gave him a sampler with all the precepts cross-stitched onto it, then read them all aloud. Afterwards, he kissed the sampler affectionately and handed it to Laertes. I wondered if it was supposed to be some handiwork of the late Mrs P. (That was my own idea; nobody said anything about it in the after-show discussion, though, so I may be off base.)
I enjoyed Beale's Hamlet. His was the gentlest, least aggressive I've seen (granted, I haven't seen that many; perhaps nine different productions including film and television). He didn't manhandle Ophelia or his mother, he didn't try to strangle Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, and he didn't attack Laertes except with his words ("Forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / Make up my sum").
Sara Kestelman (Gertrude) told us that, at one point during rehearsal, as she was leaving the theatre, she met an actor coming in who had played Hamlet a couple of years earlier. The actor stopped her and asked how it was going and where they were. "We've just got off book," responded Kestelman. "Are you hitting each other yet?" said the actor. "Hitting each other?" said Kestelman. "What do you mean?" But the actor kind of clammed up, so she dropped it. Kestelman went on to say that everyone, the director and the actors, wanted to emphasize that this was a family that loved each other but was stuck in a tragic situation.
Anyway, back to Hamlet's lack of aggression: he took his own advice to the players and never bellowed a bit during the "rogue and peasant slave" soliloquy (2.2). I've almost always seen that done where Hamlet works himself into quite a frenzy over the "Bloody, bawdy villain" part, shouting fortissimo on "O, vengeance!" and then dropping off to a quiet "Why, what an ass am I?" but there wasn't that much of a contrast in volume here; rather, the contrast was in intensity, as if Hamlet had suddenly remembered how ridiculous it was for him to be placed in the role of avenger. I don't remember exactly, but I think he might have even omitted the "O, vengeance!"
By gesture and intonation, Beale brought out the humor in Hamlet's personality, and his sensitivity. He cried more than any Hamlet I've seen (except maybe for Kevin Kline in his 1990 production), but not so much that he came off a baby. Overall, I thought Beale's performance was one of the best of the evening. He did the soliloquies as direct address, and I found them, in spite of my familiarity with them, interesting to listen to.
During "To be or not to be", Ophelia was in the background, walking back and forth, pretending to read her book. That was distracting. Ophelia (Cathryn Bradshaw) was adequate for the most part, but I wished she would've sat down or stood still and listened to Hamlet or something. After he notices her and they begin talking, she throws Hamlet's letters (tied in a packet) down towards him when he says he never gave her aught. That seemed a cruel gesture when she knows perfectly well that she's the one who has broken off the relationship at her father's insistence. Later, after Hamlet leaves and Claudius and Polonius are talking about sending him to England, she remains sitting on the floor, opening the letters one at a time, reading them, then tearing them to pieces and putting them in her purse (a drawstring pouch she wore at her waist).
The scene with the arrival of the Players was very well done and Hamlet showed how thoughtful and affectionate he can be with people who are honest with him. The Mousetrap scene was interesting in that I'd never seen the beginning of it done that way before: after turning down Gertrude's offer to sit by her, Hamlet pulled Ophelia out of her chair and onto the "stage", and they did the "shall I lie in your lap" exchange as a comedy routine, kind of like they were warming up the audience. Ophelia went along with it, seeming in good humor, even teasing Hamlet with "You are as good as a chorus". By this time they were sitting together, off by themselves behind a stack of trunks (two stacks, left and right, defined the area of the Players' stage, which was forward, and the King and Queen, backstage facing the audience, watched them). Hamlet occasionally peeked around the trunks to see how his uncle was taking things. Ophelia didn't get upset with him till she said he was keen, and he retorted it would cost her a groaning, etc, then she got up and moved away, offended.
Upon viewing the poisoning of the Player King, Claudius (played by Peter McEnery, who I had a crush on back when I was about 9 years old and saw him in The Moon-Spinners, and again a couple of years later as the fighting prince of Donegal. He was also a very good Oberon in the BBC production [one of my favorites] of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1981) - so, yeah, Claudius stood up and walked toward the stage, staring at the dead king, his hands outspread in a gesture mirroring that of the actor playing Lucianus. He stood there for a long time, then hurried away, not calling "Give me some light" till he was offstage. Everyone rushed off after that except Hamlet, Horatio, Ophelia, and a trio of musicians. Ophelia hung around all through the next part while Hamlet talked to Horatio, but Hamlet didn't pay much attention to her, so finally she walked across the stage and off. Hamlet watched her go, then put his hands to his face and began to cry. He got himself under control pretty quickly, though, and then said, "Come, some music." The musicians began to play (a very cool piece for three recorders - I like recorders), and then the curtain dropped. And then the lights came up. And so to the lobby.
The second part of the play took up with the entrance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern while Hamlet and Horatio were still listening to the musicians. They tried to talk, but Hamlet kept shushing them till the music was over.
The closet scene was an exercise in timing, and a successful one. Polonius hid behind a drapery stretched between the two middle stacks of trunks and, as I mentioned, pulled the drapery and one of the stacks down when he was killed. An interesting touch was that he did not die right away, but remained standing, bowed over a bit, while Hamlet, who wasn't looking, went on about killing a king and marrying his brother. "As kill a king?" says Gertrude. "Ay, lady, 'twas -" then he turns, sees Polonius, and stumbles over "my word", in shock at seeing who his victim really is. Then Polonius drops to the floor, pulling a red cloth after him, and dies. When Hamlet drags his body off, the cloth, caught on the body somehow, followed along for a ways, then fell free, leaving a large swath of red on the floor.
During the discussion period, Beale and Kestelman both went on for several minutes about how they had built up a trust with one another so that they could try new things during this scene. In fact, the ATC artistic director said he'd seen differences just in the few days they'd been there in Arizona. Beale told about one time when he decided to try something really different. He explained that he felt Hamlet and Gertrude reach an agreement, make a compact, at the moment when Gertrude says, "Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, / And breath of life, I have no life to breath / What thou hast said to me." She has promised not to betray her son to Claudius, and he accepts by gesture. Well, one night Beale decided to do this really different thing, so after she made her part of the compact, he just responded with "Ha!" as if he didn't believe her. Then she stood up and walked away from him, 10 or 15 feet, and he had to draw her back with his line "I must to England" and let her know he accepted the compact. He said he had thought about doing the same thing during the performance I saw, but that he hesitated and the moment passed.
Speaking of timing overall, at first things went clipping along - sometimes a little too fast - but then it became more measured. There were frequently pauses that were just slightly longer than one expected them to be. Mostly this had a positive effect, for me anyhow, but every once in a while it sounded more like the actor was trying to remember the next line. The only one who I thought could've slowed down a bit was Claudius. There were a couple of moments when he could've been a little more reflective. He was excellent in the chapel scene (3.3), but when he is trying to get Gertrude to come with him in 4.1, after Polonius is killed, he went too fast. He has to say "come" to Gertrude twice, so you know she's reluctant to accompany him. Well, the second time he said it, Gertrude turned away; now Claudius has got to know that he's lost her, and that should give him pause, but McEnery immediately threw his arms up as if impatient with a recalcitrant child, and stalked offstage.
During Ophelia's first mad scene, I wasn't impressed with her madness, except when she tried to get Gertrude and Claudius to join in the singing. They were no fun, however, so she manipulated their hands as if they were mannequins and did the singing for them, using a lower voice for Claudius' part. When she came back on after Laertes had returned, she was wearing Polonius' robe and shoes and carrying his cane, which I thought was a nice touch. When she got around to passing out flowers, she used the scraps of Hamlet's letters that she still carried in her purse. Also, during this scene, the chandeliers were lowered to about knee level, and a couple of servants at backstage with cleaning equipment. Anyhow, at one point Ophelia brushed against one of the chandeliers, setting it swinging. She noticed this and started pushing others to get them swinging as well. (I guess it was supposed to be a sort of crazy effect - my own thought again - but it didn't quite work for me.)
The Grave-digger's scene was pretty funny, but more because of Hamlet's wry sense of humor than because of the Grave-digger. Oh, he was funny enough, but ke kept singing, and it sounded tuneless. He should've taken lessons from Ophelia.
Laertes (Guy Lankester) didn't impress me much, either before he left for Paris or after his return, but then I don't know if I've ever seen a really good Laertes. Well, it's probably just me, because for one thing I don't like the character. He's bossy and officious before he leaves home, and he's saddled with some really irritating, unrealistic lines after he gets back (not to mention he poisons Hamlet). And his jumping into Ophelia's grave and asking to be buried with her is just too much.
The final duel was well choreographed, with Laertes growing impatient at not getting any hits, so he swipes his foil across Hamlet's hand. Hamlet gets mad at him then, and grabs his sword, notices that it's unbated, and stabs at Laertes (in the arm? the stomach? I can't remember). When Laertes blurts out that the king's to blame, Hamlet goes to the king with his foil, and Claudius stands with his arms outstretched, as if inviting Hamlet to go for it. He had done this once before, when he was asking Hamlet where Polonius' body was, and Hamlet, still with his long knife, tells him to "seek him i'th'other place yourself." Then he pointed his knife at Claudius, who stood with his arms spread out. Hamlet looked almost as if he would have stabbed Claudius at that moment, but then he changed his mind. It made Hamlet seem weaker than I've usually seen him, and you could tell Claudius thought he was weak, too. I got the impression that, at the final moment, Claudius once again thought that Hamlet wouldn't go through with it. Hamlet stood there a moment, pointing his foil at the King, then shifted it downward and cut the King's hand instead of running him through. Then he made him drink from the cup.
Hamlet kept himself on his feet while convincing Horatio not to commit suicide, then said, "The rest is silence" and collapsed against his friend and slid down to the floor. A moment later, with the weird music playing (sort of like a modernized liturgical chant in Latin or something), the players all assembled, even the corpses (and I sometimes wonder what a zombie Hamlet would be like), and arranged themselves in a semicircle as in the beginning, with Horatio in the middle, like the storyteller, saying "Good night, sweet prince", etc. And then they all filed out. The end.
In spite of an occasionally annoying audience - they kept laughing at familiar lines, even when they weren't funny. You could almost feel them waiting . . . waiting . . . till he says it . . . there! Hahaha! "Since brevity is the soul of wit" (chuckle) "I will be brief." (Hahaha!) "My lord, I will use them according to their desert." (Hahaha). "Alas, poor Yorick." (Hahaha!) Okay . . . . anyway, in spite of that, I enjoyed the National Theatre's production very much. And Beale's was one of the best performances of Hamlet I've seen.
