Not surprisingly, Hamlet was frequently banned in Stalinist Russia. The dictator was not a big fan of it. A play about a country run by a murderous criminal--what could possibly be the problem with that? At least Shakespeare had his characters endowed with conscience and guilt, qualities missing from Russia's "leader and teacher."
As it turns out, Shostakovich was involved with several productions of Hamlet. Two were the Kozintsev stage and film versions, which used his music. The third, as he put it, was "the most scandalous...in the history of Shakespeare." The director of that 1932 production was Nikolai Akimov. Hamlet was Akimov's first independent production. Shostakovich alleges that the production is "a nightmare for Shakespearian [sic] scholars." Contrarily, the editor of Testimony, Solomon Volkov, comments that the production was highly regarded in contemporary American literary press.
Akimov's vision for Hamlet was that of a comedic struggle for power. Hamlet was portrayed by a "stocky and fat" comic actor, "a man who loved food and drink." At this point, Shostakovich makes the rather ridiculous assertion that this corresponds to the text of the play, "which mentions Hamlet's corpulence." This is likely a reference to the line "He's fat and scant of breath," that was discussed (and dismissed) in a previous post (8/5/13). Shostakovich continues with odd assertions, commenting that the audience is "used to exalted Hamlets, to sexless Hamlets...to androgynous ones in black, thigh-hugging tights."
Alcohol played a key role in Akimov's comedic Hamlet. Everyone drank. Ophelia drowns because she is drunk. Akimov invented dialogue (never a good sign) in order to further the role of alcohol. Can one imagine a gravedigger saying "To drink or not to drink--that is the question"?
There was no ghost in Akimov's Hamlet. Instead, Hamlet impersonates the ghost. The entire play is a struggle for the Danish throne. The "To be or not to be" soliloquy occurs with Hamlet weighing the crown in his hands. Hamlet's relations with Ophelia, a "bitch and a spy," left her pregnant. As a result, she "got drunk and drowned herself." According to Shostakovich, Polonius was marvelous. This was nothing like the usual Polonius, whose "appearances are boring for the audience." The actor played it using traits from various friends, including Konstantin Stanislavski.
Shostakovich describes two other conceptions of Hamlet. His friend, Meyerhold, wished also to stage the play as a comedy. In his case, he wanted two actors to play Hamlet. One would read the tragic monologues and the other would be a comic to bother him. Meyerhold wanted to portray the ghost comedically, as a spirit that "would wear glasses and galoshes and sneeze constantly" due to a cold he caught in the trunk from which he arises.
The other Hamlet described by Shostakovich was that of Mikhail Chekov. He set the play in Purgatory. His interpretation was that "Shakespeare had written a purely symbolic play, that everyone was actually dead." The audience was delirious. Communist Party officials were horrified and banned Hamlet as a "reactionary, pessimistic, and mystical play."
While Shostakovich's stories about these Shakespearean productions illustrate the versatility of the play, they do not leave me wishing that these versions were commercially available. Watching them seems akin to viewing a car wreck.
Photos: Left--Shostakovich with Meyerhold; Right--Akimov
Quotes and Photos from Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. Solomon Volkov, ed. Trans. Antonina W. Bouis. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
No comments:
Post a Comment