Hamlet RSC 2008 - a reaction

(I missed yesterday's Poetry Friday - which is rounded up here at Wild Rose Reader - owing to being out of town, so this is a Shakespeare Saturday post instead!)

In which your reviewer attempts to stay coherent and calm, but may flail on occasion!


OK. First things first - I've never seen "Hamlet" live before (I've read it about 6 times (including 3 times while I was doing it for my English degree a few years ago), I've seen the Gibson film (yeah, I know, but I couldn't get hold of the Brannagh version), and I've no real idea about how to talk about directing decisions, so please bear with me!

So. Having never seen "Hamlet" live before, I picked a performance with two of my favourite actors in the lead roles - David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, I'm looking at you. And boy was that a GOOD choice. These two men are bloody brilliant as Hamlet and Claudius - I don't tend to use the word "genius" of living people because it's a hard word to live up to, but these two men are genius actors. The play had me spellbound and I barely noticed the 3.5 hours passing by.

The stage and the back wall behind it are both mirrored (I don't know if that's the norm for the Courtyard Theatre - this was also my first production at the RSC in Stratford - talk about a whole heap of firsts!) – and the director (Greg Doran) makes excellent use of it in the opening scenes with the watchmen on the tower seeing old Hamlet's ghost – they carried torches which they occasionally shone onto the floor, reflecting the light and making the whole scene incredibly spooky – just what you need to introduce a ghost!

David's first scene is when everyone arrives on stage following the wedding of Hamlet's uncle Claudius to his brother's wife/Hamlet's mother Gertrude. He came on and stood in a corner of the stage (actually about 6 – 8 feet from where I was sitting in the stalls). He had his hair slicked back and was wearing a dark suit (this is a modern dress performance), and I was immediately reminded of David's role as Barty Crouch Jr – there was the same stillness about him, plus a slight air of menace and controlled purpose. (I'm not saying he was recreating Barty Jr – just that the look and the stillness reminded me of the HP character. Yes, I am going to reference other roles I've seen him in, just so you know!)

Hamlet's stillness and dark clothes are in strong contrast to the rest of the wedding party, so he drew my eye and I found myself keeping half an eye on him even as I watched the other characters interacting.

Patrick Stewart, as Claudius, wore a 3-piece suit throughout (I think – bear with me – I had about 2 hours sleep last night and I'm feeling a bit fuzzy-headed now!), and wire-framed glasses which give him a wise and respectable air (which is, of course, completely at odds with him being old Hamlet's murderer).

This was a great ensemble cast. The descent of Ophelia (Mariah Gale) into madness was beautifully acted and quite unnerving. Rosencrantz (Sam Alexander) and Guildernstern (Tom Davey) were really rather stupid. Laertes (Edward Bennett) didn't really work for me in the latter part of the play: when he's threatening Claudius, he was unconvincing – like a teenager, who'd been watching too many gangster movies, and his death didn't really bother me.

Gertrude (Penny Downie) was excellent – particularly during the dumbshow (which was very OTT and funny) which precedes the play-within-the-play – I saw her fidgeting uneasily throughout and her hands were never still – and during the closet scene in which she confronts Hamlet about his behaviour and he accuses her of incest, he says:

You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this?

And I noticed (and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit this!) that her nipples were very visible, and I thought "Yeah, she's not so old as all that, Hamlet, for all you're 30!"

Horatio (Peter de Jersey) was very good as Hamlet's friend – trying to inject some sanity and wisdom into Hamlet's mad proceedings. Interestingly, David played Hamlet as less mad than knowing/calculating – and oh so witty and funny! I've never had so much of a sense of the comedy in the play as I did when seeing this production: David has amazing comic timing – which Patrick Stewart freely acknowledged during the after-show talk with (most of) the cast. The exchanges between Hamlet and Polonius (Oliver Ford Davies) were brilliantly witty and clever, showing up Polonius for the old windbag that he is. Oliver Ford Davies does a brilliant job actually – going off into mumbled asides, or losing the thread of what he's saying.

Things that particularly stood out: the quiet intensity of the graveyard scene where Hamlet's discussing old Yorick, whom he once knew well; the closet scene with Gertrude where David leaps up onto the bed to stand arguing with her; the sword fight with Laertes; the hauntings by the Ghost of old Hamlet; Ophelia's scenes wherein she's mad; Gertrude's reaction to the dumbshow before the play-within-the-play; this exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia:

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
[Spinning a small footstool by one foot in his right hand]
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

- David's Hamlet puts great emphasis on the first syllable of "country" all the while squatting in front of her on hands and heels and thrusting his crotch at her (how any of us in the audience who fancy DT managed to restrain ourselves at that point, I really don't know!); Horatio's final lines to Hamlet: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! (which I'm not ashamed to say reduced me to tears).

All in all, this was a fantastic performance from the whole cast and I'm very grateful to have had the chance to see the show live and with my two favourite actors in the lead roles (hooray for early 40th birthday presents!).

It was also great to see the show with three of my LJ friends!!

X-Posted to LJ.

Poetry Friday - 23

In three weeks time, I shall be seeing this for myself:







(Photos Alistair Muir)

And my excitement levels are steadily rising. This means I'm in well into Shakespeare Mode right now, so this week I'm bringing you another of the Bard's Sonnets.

Sonnet 23

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart.
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.


I can hardly wait to see one of my favourite Shakespeare plays live - and with no less than two of my favourite actors (David Tennant and Patrick Stewart) in leading roles.

This week's Poetry Friday round up is over at Big A, little a

Awards News

Two lots of awards news to cheer me this morning:

From The Times online: A gothic tale about vampire hunters has become the perfect Hallowe'en winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2007, it was announced yesterday. Marcus Sedgwick won the prize with his sinister story, My Swordhand is Singing, about a woodcutter and his son who fight the legendary undead in the forests of seventeenth-century Romania. (My review is here)

For more details about the prize visit Bookheads or Booked Up

* * * * * *

And in the non-Book Awards category David Tennant and Doctor Who both won awards in their categories in last night's National Television Awards ! Alas that Freema Agyeman couldn't make it a hat-trick.

High Culture Meets Popular Culture Contest

Proving that (a) "I aten't dead" yet and (b) that I am reading Blogs still, I'm linking to the latest contest by Nancy at Journey Woman - High Culture Meets Popular Culture.

Here's what Nancy says:

Here is your mission, if you want to play:

Submit your comments here with examples of TV shows, popular songs, or movies that used references or quotes from famous poets or authors in a way that may have caught people by surprise. Caught by surprise? I mean, don't include the movie Sense and Sensibility, where half of it was quotes from poetry because two of the characters sat around and read each other poetry throughout. Don't include Shakespeare in Love or Hamlet, where of course there will be a lot of, um, Shakespeare.

Give me movies like Porky's II, or songs like Dire Straits "Romeo and Juliet." Better yet, give me quotes from The Simpsons. Any extra explanation you can include, similar to mine above about Porky's II, will gain you extra points.

You also get extra points for posting about this contest on your blog.

Deadline: October 12
Prizes: Good. I'll randomly draw 4 winners and I'll send them gift cards worth real money ($10 to 25).

Enjoyment factor: 10

Oh, and I'll create a post of all the submissions. Please include links to videos, or pictures, if you can, because that will make the post more fun.

My own response (this will surprise no one who knows me) was as follows:

"Doctor Who": Season 1 - we had a meeting with Charles Dickens (doing his "A Christmas Carol" one-man show) in "The Unquiet Dead"; Season 3 - we had a meeting with Shakespeare (lots of quotations in "The Shakespeare Code", plus references to Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle", Harry Potter and the "Back to the Future" fims - talk about giving me a Nerdgasm !), poetry quotations from T S Eliot in "The Lazarus Experiment", and part of Laurence Binyon's "For The Fallen" at the end of "The Family of Blood". In addition there were the episodes with historical themes (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Tooth and Claw, The Girl in the Fireplace, The Idiot's Lantern, Evolution of the Daleks/Daleks in Manhattan, and Human Nature/Family of Blood).

And that doesn't include the many, many meetings with literary and/or historical characters that were scattered throughout the Classic Who series.

Plus which, David Tennant's going to be playing in "Hamlet" and "Love's Labour's Lost" next summer/autumn - that's bound to get at least a few non-Shakespeare fans into the theatre !

And yes, I AM going to see David in "Hamlet" - my family have agreed to fund a trip to Stratford as my 40th birthday present next year - and a friend who's an RSC member is hoping to get us both a ticket once the online booking opens this week - so hopefully I'll get the date I want (September 5) which is a matinee performance with a full-cast "talkback" session afterwards. And did I mention Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Men fame is also in "Hamlet"? That makes it major Nerdgasm territory for me !!

Poetry Friday 62

It's been unofficially confirmed that the incomparable David Tennant will be doing Hamlet with the RSC in Stratford next year (and no, it's not certain whether that means he's leaving "Doctor Who" at the end of the fourth season, which is currently being filmed). Since I studied Hamlet as part of my degree but have loved the play for many, many years, I thought I would share some lines from what is one of my favourite plays.

The first section is Polonius' advice to Laertes (Act 1, Scene III):

Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for.
There ... my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!


And how very wise is Shakespeare: "to thine own self be true"...

The second section is Hamlet's famous soliloquy which I memorised years and years ago and can still recite (Act III, Scene I):

To be, or not to be : that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Oh WOW !!

Just five weeks ago I wrote only my second ever fan letter to an actor. I included a birthday card because the actor's birthday was a couple of weeks later... Then, with so much going on in my life, I forgot about the letter until I got home today and found a self addressed envelope waiting for me. I looked at it rather blankly, wondering what it was, opened it and nearly dropped the contents in shock: a signed photo-postcard from David Tennant had fallen into my hand...

The funny thing is that David probably has very little idea of just how happy he's made me, just by writing a handful of words on this "Doctor Who" postcard !

And here's the postcard in question (apologies for the quality of the photo which was taken with my mobile phone's camera - and yes, that's my thumb !)

Recovery TV Drama

As you know by now, I'm a huge fan of the Scottish actor, David Tennant, who currently inhabits the role of The Doctor in BBC's "Doctor Who". I have been doing my best to keep up with his film and TV output, and last Sunday night the BBC aired a 90 minute, one-off drama called Recovery from the pen of Tony Marchant. This was not an easy drama to watch. Alan (Tennant) and Tricia Hamilton (Sarah Parrish) are very happy. He's the head of a building firm and at the top of his game. She's a part-time beautician and mother to their two sons, teenager Dean and younger son, Joel. However, one night their perfect, if unremarkable, life is torn apart when a last-minute decision to pop out for a quick drink with a colleague sees Alan step out in front of a passing truck. The resulting accident leaves him in a deep coma but with remarkably few physical injuries. Tricia is desperately worried about him and absolutely delighted when he comes round, only to discover that the man she loved has disappeared. His behaviour has changed, he's lost all of his inhibitions, and he's veering between angry and frustrated at the one extreme, and vulnerable and child-like at the other. Simple tasks like taking a shower, getting dressed and making toast are beyond him initially. He can't go back to the job he loves. Alan's behaviour puts an intolerable strain on his relationship with Tricia and she is desperate to find the soulmate and husband whom she loves - but fears she may have lost him forever.

Sons Joel and Dean are alternately frightened and charmed by their father - one minute he's throwing games around when Joel tells Alan it's his turn to make a move, and the next he's playing hide and seek, crawling through the grass with Joel. Dean, meanwhile, is in the process of taking his A-levels (pre-University exams) and veering between utter embarrassment at his father's lack of inhibition, and angry that his mother is prepared to abandon his father.

This was an amazing drama. Very moving, sometimes gut-wrenchingly sad, and sometimes laugh out loud funny. David Tennant's performance confirmed him to me as an utterly awesome actor who instinctively knows how to play any given role, without ever going over the top. If you get the chance to see it, do so.