Hamlet deconstructed
Ithink it was the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev who described Hamlet as “this great Gothic castle of a poem with its baffled half- lights and glooms.” Perhaps because it’s set almost entirely within an actual castle, the play is one of those narrative works that seems to exist in space as well as in time. It has become a myth that one moves through, its elements familiar enough to be dispersed and re-assembled at will.
That is the approach taken by Ravi Jain in his mostly masterful staging of the adaptation that he calls Prince Hamlet. The production, marking the 10th anniversary of Jain’s Why Not Theatre company, begins where Shakespeare’s play ends and then goes back. Hamlet, dying, begs his friend Horatio to stay alive and “tell my tale, a’right?” Horatio complies, promising his hearers an account of “carnal, bloody and unnatural acts,” and making the rest of the evening a flashback.
Not, t hough, a st r ai ghtf orward or even a straightbackward one. Some scenes are played out of their accustomed order, giving us action first, explanation later. We get an unaccustomed glimpse of Hamlet swaying at sea with his treacherous school friends who look deservedly seasick. The death of Polonius is staged from a new and revelatory angle. Casting, too, is shaken up. All the characters except the king and queen are cast across gender lines, though the sexes of the characters themselves remain unaltered; this isn’t Princess Hamlet. Most notably, Dawn Jani Birley, who plays Horatio, is deaf and communicates entirely in sign language.
Birley, who speaks with her whole body, is in effect playing two, maybe three roles at once. She’s the protagonist’s friend and confidante as in the text, but she’s also the interpreter both for Horatio’s unseen auditors and for the audience out front. And not just for its hearing- impaired members, though the rest of us have to interpret what she does through what the other actors say rather than the reverse. She is embedded in the action throughout, and plays in some sense the largest role, having — in this of all plays — to communicate all the lines without speaking any of them. A full Hamlet can last four hours; this version comes in at under three, but that’s still a lot of text.
Horatio is usually Hamlet’s straight man; this one is more like the grown- up replacement for his childhood friend, the late jester Yorick. When Hamlet mercilessly mocks his opponents, Birley’s Horatio is right there with him, urging him on, illustrating and gesticulating to the point where it’s hard to tell the dancer from the dance.
As it happens, Christine Horne’s Hamlet is especially adept i n moments of brutal sarcasm. A slight, blonde figure, she lashes out at herself too, sometimes in unexpected places. A soliloquy and a half have disappeared, and they the most passionate ones, but she re- channels their energies into a “to be or not to be” that’s furious rather then contemplative — and the better for it.
She can contemplate well when r e quired, as in her thoughts on that piece of work that’s a man, shot through with an awareness of the gulf between what should be and what is. She’s best throughout at accentuating the negative; the production doesn’t leave her much psychological room to develop.
Physical room it has. Everyone looks good on Lorenzo Savoini’s set, a slightly raised platform, the only furnishings for which are piles of dirt and fulllength mirrors. The dirt serves both symbolic and real purposes, as in the graveyard scene and in the madness of Ophelia. The mirrors make a splendid silent commentary on Claudius’ attempts at repentance, and also figure in what must be this puritanical Hamlet’s hysterical fan- tasy of his elders’ rutting, the cue for his thoughts on suicide.
Even in what is presumably real time, Rick Roberts’ Claudius and Karen Robinson’s Gertrude are extravagantly demonstrative in public. Robinson is especially heavy-handed with the smoochiness, but compensates when shocked into concern for her son. The adaptation even seems to promise her a new repentant sub- plot though it doesn’t follow through. Roberts’ Claudius is a very complete portrait of a usurper who would prefer to get away with just one crime but can slide all too easily into further villainy when required.
Canada has recently been rich in fine Poloniuses. Maria Vacratsis’ is one of the best, and probably the least sentimental: impatient with his children, i mpenetrably s el f - s ati sf i ed and with an odd resemblance to Henry Kissinger. Jeff Ho is an Ophelia more spirited than most, making her madness, in which two scenes have been beneficially combined in one, all the more poignant. Thomas Ryder Payne’s low- humming score would probably be irritating in a more conventional production, but it works well here. Andre du Toit’s lighting is invaluable in pointing out contrasts and smoothing out transitions. Some things in this adaptation/production may be questionable, but everything feels thoughtful and imagined: thoroughly conceived by the director, thoroughly communicated to and through the cast.
I’M SCARED I DIDN’T GIVE (SCHERFIG) EVERYTHING SHE NEEDED.