Theatre Review: Hamlet

Shakespeare alive and well in Shanghai, killing off all his characters - By Morgan, Apr 03, 08

I was pretty excited to be seeing TNT's "Hamlet" because I read in the Shanghai Talk that they were going to be sticking close to the original production in Shakespeare's time, keeping it sparse, heavy, and direct. I'm not really a fan of the whimsical "Shakespeare in the Park"-type productions, or stagings that try to update and sensationalize the tragedies to make them more palatable to the attention spans of modern audiences.
I think Hamlet should be grueling, frustrating, gloomy, masochistic, awash in a sea of blood, and four hours long.

Also in the article it was mentioned off-hand that the production was bringing in two guitars from England. I was hoping that they'd find their way into the hands of a couple of long-hairs in the orchestra pit, who would then finger-pick Metallica's "Master of Puppets" over the performance. Turbo rad. Hamlet's kicking your brain's ass up there on stage and two Norwegian metal dudes are in the pit melting your face off with tasty metal licks. HamletMachine redux.

Last night's opening performance at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center was sold-out or very close to it, based on the notoriety of the play itself -- the "greatest in the English language" -- but also on TNT's previously well-received showings in China of a bloodier Shakespeare play "Macbeth" and the jovial "Oliver Twist." Both of these, I think, lend themselves more to visual spectacle, so it was a bold choice for TNT to choose Hamlet, which is an intensely dialogue-driven play. Despite the fact that text reads like a Greatest Hits for aphorisms in the English language, conveying paradoxical characters and subtly mirroring themes through dense blocks of acrobatic, rapid-fire Shakespearean dialogue must have been a real challenge.

And it was a challenge, I thought, that the troupe met and exceeded for the most part. As a traveling troupe, TNT boasts a small cast with most of the actors playing double and triple roles. Their talents were further called upon to provide ongoing musical accompaniment to the action in the form of choral singing, hand drums, and acoustic guitar arrangements. This, I thought, was really well done and gave the piece a heightened, non-verbal sensorial quality, adding to the emotional force in the scenes. Creative staging of key visual scenes -- the speech by Hamlet Sr.'s ghost and the "Mousetrap Play" scene -- were fluid, clever, and well-executed, and the fact that their success depended on the cooperative speech and movement of the actors rather than on mis en scene adhered to the overall pared-down aesthetic of the play.

And so with this pared-down aesthetic, the performances of the actors came to the fore. The wirey Richard Keightley in the role of Hamlet was strong. Although Hamlet's conflicted morality on the prospect of killing for revenge was thematically thrust to the forefront of consideration, he came off as more petulant, callous, and an ultimately unredeemable tragic hero. A more unredeemable Hamlet, is to my mind, more unsettling and therefore more captivating. Sophie Franklin in the role of Ophelia was sufficiently crumpled, downtrodden, and marginalized pre-"madness" and in her transformation after her father's death in the scene with her "Valentine's Song" was powerful, visceral, and arresting. Based on the strength of her performance in this one scene, she managed to arch the entire play around and send it barreling off to its bloody conclusions, obliterating the comedic elements in the first three acts established by some stand out Stooges-type stuff from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

This production ends on a full-stop with a sort of muted catharsis. Moral paralysis and metaphysical paradox are ultimately arrested by large-scale capital D, Death -- Death for everyone.

Good times.

Hamlet by TNT Theatre Britain runs from April 2 to April 12 (break on April 7) at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center. Tickets (800rmb, 280rmb, 200rmb, 150rmb) are available at the box office and the booking hotline is 6217 2426 or 6217 3055. Starts at 7:30pm.

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