Rock ’n’ roll tunes out beauty of Bard’s words
Hamlet
(out of 4) Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Richard Rose. Until Feb. 11 at Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. TarragonTheatre.com or 416-531-1827.
There’s something immediately striking about the idea of a rock-’n’roll version of Hamlet.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to a talented group of Canadian theatre artists, who one assumes can avoid the Schoolhouse Rock cliché of it all — like a substitute high school English teacher sitting backwards on a chair, arms folded on the backrest, introducing the class to a real hip wordsmith they might not have heard of called William Shakespeare — it still comes across as a bit too precise.
Positioning Shakespeare’s most iconic vision of young male angst as if he’s the frontman of a rock band is apt, to be sure, if a bit on the nose.
It’s not hard to imagine the sensitive, introspective Hamlet as a music lover. In one of the more publicized productions of Hamlet of late, the National Theatre’s 2015 version, Benedict Cumberbatch opened the show as the titular character listening to a vinyl record of the song “Nature Boy,” later donning a David Bowie T-shirt. Tarragon Theatre artistic director Richard Rose goes further by placing Hamlet (Noah Reid) at a piano, as he absent-mindedly strokes the keys and hunches over a microphone between his legs, into which he growls his first line “A little more than kin, and less than kind,” in response to his smooth-talking, lounge lizard of an uncle Claudius (Nigel Shawn Williams).
The stark contrast of the two men drew laughs from the audience on opening night, as the exaggerations provided by the production’s musical element played with the audience’s idea of Hamlet and Claudius. At the same time, it was an introduction to how Rose and sound designer/composer Thomas Ryder Payne envi- sioned using music — provided by a backing band comprising other members of the cast — to underscore the personalities of each character and the atmospheres of each scene (not to turn the play into a musical, thankfully). There are stunning moments where the music, performance and Jason Hand’s lighting come together in powerful synchronicity. For example, in one of the few instances where Shakespeare’s text is actually sung, featuring Jack Nicholsen and Beau Dixon as the two actors in the play within the play, Dixon is so ferocious that it’s no wonder Claudius outs himself as the murderer of his brother, Hamlet’s father.
However, the music often bursts to the forefront of the action and the language, leaving behind its supportive role and becoming the main actor.
Ryder Payne’s compositions are often stars in their own right, but it comes at the expense of nuanced interpretations of the text.
Instead of seeing Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius (Cliff Saunders), Ophelia (Tiffany Ayalik) and Gertrude (Tantoo Cardinal) emerge as complicated people torn between duty, love and honour, the music paints the play in broad, one-dimensional strokes. Now Hamlet is angry and screaming, now Polonius is preaching to his daughter, now Claudius is pious and fearful, now Gertrude is horrified by her son’s descent into madness.
Reid, a seasoned musician and actor, is eerily effective at Hamlet’s more melancholy moments, especially when that turns into spiteful teasing and power-hungry mind games (his attempts at being an amateur stage director are hilarious).
But when Rose’s direction pushes him into screamo musical areas, we lose our grip on him. While it’s reasonable for Rose to use loud rock music as a way to externalize Hamlet’s inner turmoil, it doesn’t fit with the gloomy, lyrical man we have come to know (besides, we lose the text altogether when it’s screamed into a microphone).
It may stem from an old-fashioned idea of what rock ’n’ roll is; if Reid’s Hamlet is a modern e-millennial, as his costume and demeanour suggests, his preferred method of musical expression wouldn’t naturally be ’60s heavy metal.
Rose’s staging also hints at a past era, with mic stands lining the front of the stage, which presents a thematic dissonance between the characters and the play, especially the title role.
For a character so dependent on soliloquies and inner reflection, Rose’s staging that has each actor speaking into hand-held mics gives Hamlet a constant air of performing, of being entirely aware that he’s being watched and presenting a version of himself to that audience.
He becomes an unreliable entryway into the story, which is fine if the rest of the production didn’t play out so straightforwardly — “straightforward” meaning the plot.
Kathleen Johnston’s costumes suggest various time periods, turning Hamlet’s best friend from school Horatio (Greg Gale) into a priest, Laertes (Brandon McGibbon) into a ’60sera war vet in an army green jacket, and Rosencrantz (Rachel Cairns) and Guildenstern (Jesse LaVercombe) into a Vaudevillian comedy duo.
If the direction seems incomplete, Tarragon Theatre’s Hamlet is at least saved by a few key players: Hand’s lighting, Nicholsen’s Leonard Cohen-like voice, Dixon’s abilities on the drums, the comedic repartee between Cairns and LaVercombe, Ayalik’s throat singing, and Reid’s cynical, vindictive Hamlet.
What it doesn’t do, however, is make a convincing argument for why Shakespeare is taking up a spot in a theatre dedicated to developing and premiering new Canadian plays.