Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✩✩✩
by William Shakespeare, directed by Richard Rose
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
January 10-February 11, 2018
Hamlet: “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing
so overdone is from the purpose of playing” (III, 2)
The title of the Tarragon Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is styled as Hamlet (with the word stuck through). This is quite appropriate since Richard Rose’s directorial conceit frequently seems determined to erase Shakespeare’s text. It’s hard to know what audience the production is meant for. It should be no one’s first Hamlet since Rose’s direction is rather too successful in alienating the audience from the characters. On the other hand, those who know the play well will deplore Rose’s willingness to drown out key portions of Shakespeare’s text, like Hamlet’s soliloquies, with music.
Tarragon Literary Manager Joanna Falck explains Rose’s concept: “This production will highlight the idea of performance – the actors will be presenting the lines, speaking the play through microphones, and the entire play will be backed by live rock ‘n roll music which will create the environment and reflect the emotional life, the inner life of the characters”. Later she quotes Rose as saying, “‘Marshall McLuhan said that young people turn to rock music to push out all this information of the electronic age that is coming at them and they’re angry, trying to express their identity in a world they see as filled with lies and hypocrisy – and that’s Hamlet, isn’t it?’”
Falck’s quotations point out the internal contradiction in the concept. If the character Hamlet is identified with rock ’n’ roll, how can the entire background music of the show be rock ’n’ roll unless all the characters are conceived as versions of Hamlet? As it turns out, rock ’n’ roll along the lines of heavy metal does accompany only Hamlet’s monologues. Claudius and Gertrude are first identified with lounge music and later with disco and Polonius’s first two speeches are accompanied by fittingly sanctimonious organ music.
There are two problems with this system. First, it is irregularly applied. When Laertes rages at Hamlet at Ophelia’s grave, the same rock music accompanies his lines as had backed Hamlet’s. Is Laertes another Hamlet? Not really, since he’s just the opposite. He’s willing to act first and think later. As for Claudius and Gertrude, their public lounge and disco music is never heard past the first act. Instead, their lines, as are most of the characters’ lines in the play, are backed with generally menacing ambient electronica.
The second, more serious problem is that the rock music accompanying all but one of Hamlet’s famous soliloquies is so loud that it overwhelms the words. This is even true in Hamlet’s all-important speech “We defy augury” when the constant drum-beating blots out key words in Hamlet’s final insight into life.
Compounding Rose’s contradictory and largely unnecessary use of continual background music is the unevenness of the cast. Principal among these, sad to say, is Noah Reid as Hamlet. Reid is an indifferent Hamlet, neither inspired nor inspiring. Reid makes Hamlet moody when he has to be, angry when he has to be, suspicious when he has to be. The trouble is that a great Hamlet conveys does not convey these emotions sequentially but all bundled up together all the time. Even when Hamlet is relatively happy, as when talking with the players, we should see that he is still cogitating about his delayed mission of revenge at the back of his mind since indeed the interlude with the players leads to his self-chiding soliloquy “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” Here, when the Ghost reminds Hamlet of his “almost blunted purpose”, it seems as if the purpose for Reid’s Hamlet has been not so much blunted as forgotten. In Reid’s defence it must be said that overwhelming Hamlet’s soliloquies with music hardly helps Reid build his character.
An ineffective Hamlet strangely causes the play to turn much more into the tragedy of Claudius. Unlike Reid, Nigel Shawn Williams gives Claudius a very clear emotional arc. His king begins almost in giddiness as if he has pulled off the perfect crime and no one has has found out. Williams shows that Claudius fears Hamlet’s melancholy because it may be a sign that his nephew has guessed the truth. After the play-within-a-play, Williams’s Claudius is completely shaken and develops nervous tics that become more severe as the action progresses. Claudius’ soliloquy when he attempts to pray, luckily not drowned out, becomes the turning point in the play where Claudius sees that the murder of Hamlet’s father must now lead to Hamlet’s murder.
Tantoo Cardinal is not as effective at charting Gertrude’s emotional course as Williams is with Claudius, mostly because she leaves unclear what exactly Gertrude thinks about her situation until Hamlet confronts her in the closet scene. Rather than bringing out her thoughts through speech, Rose has decided that Gertrude decides to silence her conscience through drink. By the duelling scene she is totally soused which Rose gives as a reason why she drinks the poisoned chalice.
As for Hamlet’s mirror family, Cliff Saunders, looking like a caricature of a Viennese psychoanalyst, is very funny as the pedantic, over-confident Polonius, although those familiar with the play will regret that Rose has cut Polonius’ famous farewell speech to Laertes in Act 1. When Saunders plays the Gravedigger, Rose takes his concept overboard by trying to turn the figure into a stand-up comic. Since Rose has had no character attempt to interact with the audience before, Saunders’ attempted routine fails miserably.
As Laertes, Brandon McGibbon proves he is incredibly adept at multitasking by playing various tunes on his guitar while making sense of the Shakespearean verse he speaks. In the graveyard scene, McGibbon’s Laertes appears far more stricken with grief than Reid’s Hamlet and in general, though Laertes has little stage time, McGibbon make Laertes a much more memorable character.
Tiffany Ayalik is a fine Ophelia. As Ayalik plays it Ophelia is justly angry with Hamlet for toying with her emotions and in the “nunnery” scene treats him with a mixture of pity and contempt. She makes clear that what pushes Ophelia over the edge is not Hamlet’s abandoning her, but Polonius’ death. In Ayalik’s hands Ophelia’s mad scene, complete with lovely singing, seems perfectly natural rather than contrived for sentiment.
Greg Gale is an earnest well-spoken Horatio, better, in fact, at speaking Shakespeare’s verse than Reid who is too given to colloquial elisions. Why Rose has placed Horatio in a dog-collar and cassock is a mystery. The only point seems to be to turn Hamlet’s famous remark into a jab at religion when Hamlet tells him, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
Musically the highlight of the evening comes when Jack Nicholsen and Beau Dixon sing their parts as the Player King and Queen. After an hour of instrumental backing, song feels overdue and Nicholsen and Dixon make such a positive impression one wonders why in a production that supposedly highlights “the idea of performance” Rose has not used song rather than miking as a means of amplifying Shakespeare’s language.
The set with five mics and five chairs means the staging is often awkward. Actors frequently have to play their parts holding a mic to their mouth while gesturing with their free hand. In the duelling scene two unused mics purposelessly stand centre stage so that Laertes and Hamlet have to fight around them.
What shines through in this muddled production is the great talent of the performers who not only must act but also play instruments and sing. With direction more focussed on clarity of storytelling than on promoting a flawed concept that obscures rather than illuminates Shakespeare’s text, this Hamlet could have had the disturbing minimalist air of inmates of a madhouse entertaining themselves as in John Doyle’s groundbreaking Sweeney Todd of 2004 where all the singers also accompanied themselves on variety of instruments. As it is Rose’s Hamlet is a curiosity that will likely appeal more to fans of the actors or of live stage music than to fans of the play.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Jesse LaVercombe, Jack Nicholsen as the Player King, Beau Dixon as the Player Queen (back row), Noah Reid as Hamlet, Tiffany Ayalik as Ophelia, Nigel Shawn Williams as Claudius and Tantoo Cardinal as Gertrude (front row); Noah Reid as Hamlet, Tiffany Ayalik as Ophelia; Brandon McGibbon as Laertes and Noah Reid as Hamlet (foreground) with Beau Dixon as Priest, Nigel Shawn Williams as Claudius, Tantoo Cardinal as Gertrude, Cliff Saunders as Gravedigger and Greg Gale as Horatio. ©2018 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.tarragontheatre.com.
2018-01-12
Hamlet