A Long Time Ago

The title could refer to one of the subjects of this post...or to the date of last one.  Either way, a couple of recent intersections between Hamlet and life have led here.  The first was more expected, the second not as much.

After viewing The King on Netflix (and being rather underwhelmed), I sought out Harold Bloom's book, Falstaff:  Give Me Life.  It was thoroughly enjoyable, as expected of Bloom's work.  What was surprising was the number of times that the author referred to Hamlet within the book.  I had not thought about the numerous parallels between the characters, but Bloom's analysis gave plenty of material for consideration.  Whether one is a fan of Hamlet, the Henriad (or Falstaffiad, as the author calls it), or just a general fan of Shakespeare, the short book is a very pleasurable read.

The second recent encounter with Hamlet was less expected.  The local art museum, the Memorial Art Gallery, is hosting an exhibit entitled "Alphonse Mucha:  Master of Art Nouveau."  A frequent visitor to the gallery, I stopped by to take a look at Mucha's work.  Admittedly, I was entirely unfamiliar with the artist, so it was a new and pleasant experience.  I learned that Mucha had a working relationship with actress Sarah Bernhardt, who portrayed Hamlet on stage.  Included among Mucha's artwork was a photograph of Bernhardt in her famous role.  It was very cool to see Hamlet making an appearance in a gallery exhibit (although I'm not sure how I might have reacted to another "trouser job" on stage).

Recent excursions to bookstores have added a couple of Hamlet-related titles to my collection.  At some point they will move to the top of the "to read" list, and posts will follow here.  Hopefully the title of those posts will not mirror this one!

Hamlet on Electronovision

A recent trip to the public library DVD shelf led to the discovery of a new-to-me Hamlet:  Richard Burton's Hamlet.  While I had seen the DVD offered on Amazon, purchasing another edition for the personal collection never quite resonated.  Finding it available to borrow for free, however, was a huge win!

The performance captured on film was one done live in 1964 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.  The DVD title refers to the lead actor, Richard Burton as Hamlet.  I thought it odd that it was identified as his Hamlet, and not the playwright's or even the director's (Sir John Gielgud).  The rear of the DVD case holds remarks from the director.  He calls it "a Hamlet acted in rehearsal clothes, stripped of all the extraneous trappings...This performance was conceived as a final run-through...."

The performance is a refreshingly traditional version of Hamlet.  At a run time of just over three hours, not much of the script is removed (and that which was deleted was not noticeable).  There is minimal set dressing and there are no costume changes, which makes sense when one reads the director's notes.  The preserved video is in black and white.  The video is at times tough to interpret and the audio is at times difficult to decipher, but for such an historical document these problems can be overlooked.

Several things stood out from the production.  It is a very animated performance.  Richard Burton fit expectation perfectly as to what Hamlet should be.  He displayed a terrific emotional range, becoming intense without going over the top.  Some suspension of disbelief is required, though, to imagine a 39-year-old actor in the role.  Also very animated was the audience.  I cannot recall any Hamlet I have seen that received as much applause.  Entrances, exits, scene changes--such a reception is nearly unheard of.  It also was an audience that understood what they were seeing and reacted appropriately, as much a credit to the theatergoers as to the acting company.

The ghost was presented as a shadow on the set, with the voice of the director taking the ghost's lines.  A complete reversal from the most recent Hamlet I saw, which included a ghost able to be hugged, this was a very fitting portrayal.  In the chamber scene, just before the ghost's reappearance, Hamlet compares pictures of Claudius and his father from lockets.  Oddly, there were no lockets, perhaps another indication that this was simply a run-through.

The dumb show was presented before "The Mousetrap."  How did Claudius miss it?  He was too busy canoodling with Gertrude.  The entire scene was well-choreographed, and it actually made dramatic sense.  It was not so much the play that offended Claudius as Hamlet's unseemly behavior during the performance, a great interpretation of the scene.

The duel between Laertes and Hamlet also was well-choreographed, although not terribly violent.  The switch of foils occurs when Hamlet takes the unbated one directly from Laertes and throws his own back in return.  That seemed to be kind of a cop-out.  It left me wondering if the transfer might have been changed in the actual production.

Overall, this version of Hamlet is excellently rendered and well done.  Having just viewed the play on stage one week ago, I did not know whether I would be able to watch it again so soon after (especially a three-hour version).  This one was tremendously enjoyable and restored my faith in live performances.

As a bonus to the performance, the DVD includes an interview with Richard Burton.  He and the interviewer discuss how it was that the film version came to be.  Through a novel process called "electronovision," a live performance was captured on film.  Fifty-five years later, this creation of a "theatrofilm" seems second nature in a world overrun with technology.  At the time, though, the concept had to be both new and exciting.  The recorded play was sent to 1,000 movie houses for four performances held over two days in September (23rd and 24th), 1964.  People were able to go to their local movie house to see a Broadway play on the big screen.  Consider this the ancestor of Fathom Events or NT Live today.  Even the notion that the theatrofilm would be preserved was not expected.  As Burton put it, following those four showings his Hamlet "will never possibly be shown again."  That one is able in 2019 to watch a live performance from 1964 is truly an incredible, one-of-a-kind experience!

Hamlet at the Diamond

No, our titular hero did not visit the ballpark for a quick nine innings.  This was Hamlet at the Irish Classical Theatre Company (ICTC) in Buffalo.  It was my first visit to the venue, discovered via an Internet search for live performances of Hamlet in the geographic area.  As I would learn, this production had much in common with my last trip to Buffalo to see Hamlet.

The ICTC sent an e-mail notification that the matinee performance of Hamlet would begin with an introductory lecture.  I was happy to bump up my arrival time in order to be able to attend. Conducted by Dr. Barbara Bono, a professor at the University at Buffalo, the presentation's non-pithy title was "Hamlets and Your Hamlet:  A Conversation about Famous Hamlets, the ICTC Hamlet, and Your Hamlet."  The talk turned out to be introductory in nature.  Dr. Bono spoke about how Hamlet is "hugely open to interpretation."  She began with historical information about the play.  Next she compared the film roles as acted by Laurence Olivier, "the contemplative Hamlet," and Mel Gibson, "the Hamlet of action."  Also included were the portrayals by Kenneth Branagh and Ethan Hawke.  Dr. Bono set the stage for the performance we were to see that afternoon.  The set and dress would be modern, and the Fortinbras subplot would be omitted; fairly standard directorial treatments.  She described Hamlet as a graduate student in divinity at Wittenberg, leading me to wonder if she had ever seen David Davalos' play of that name.  At the conclusion of the talk, the floor was opened for questions or for stories about one's "Hamlet."  There was not enough time (or heaven knows, enough interest among other audience members) for me to suck the air out of the room with personal Hamlet stories.  (Thank you, reader, for making it this far.)

The lecture afforded the audience a chance to examine the theatre and the set.  The theatre is not quite in the round.  It is, rather, in the shape of a diamond, a baseball infield if you will. The seating is very comfortable.  I had a front row seat, which was at stage level, in theory a great sight line.  I am not sure about sight lines if one has another patron sitting in front.  Continuing the allusion to baseball, the set consisted of the infield done as a tile floor with alternating dark and light tiles.  There were patches of stone at each corner; think the bases of the diamond.  In addition, at first, second, and third base there were piles of jumbled furniture, much as one would find in one's attic.  There was a wooden frame set up in the shape of a squared-off "U", with the bottom of the "U" at second base.  The frame allowed one to think of walls or doors, even if cast members did not use them consistently as such.

The cast entered, attired in modern dress.  I noticed immediately that Polonius, directly in front of me, had forgotten to tie his shoes.  Hamlet, attired all in black, dragged his own chair on stage while the others used assorted chairs that were already placed.  Hamlet's opening dialogue was a bit unsettling.  It was loud, stilted, and grossly emotive; it did not bode well for the afternoon at the theatre.  Time would tell.

Hamlet's meeting with the ghost of his father provided the first questionable directorial decision.  The ghost had a physical body.  Hamlet and the ghost engaged in hugs and other physical contact.  It was not explained how this could happen.  Were we peering into the inner workings of a deeply disturbed prince who imagined the ability to touch a ghost?  For the moment, we were left to wonder.  Hamlet rejoined his friends and asked them to swear upon his sword, although it was only a knife.

The arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Elsinore led to additional directorial oddities.  Their initial meeting with Hamlet consisted of dialogue without discussion of fortune's "privates."  Following, the two were left to sit uncomfortably on paint cans that were produced from the detritus at first base.  There were plenty of chairs on stage.  Why should there be paint cans, and why should they be forced to sit on them?  As a humorous point, it failed.  As a serious plot device, it also failed.  The entrance of Polonius to inform Hamlet of the players came as Hamlet delivered a line about it being a Monday morning.  With all of the lines that had been excised thus far, this throwaway line (which I had to look in a text to find) was left intact.

Hamlet's "rogue and peasant slave" soliloquy was a mess.  It passed from unbelievable to totally unbelievable as Hamlet screamed "O vengeance!" at the top of his lungs.  I recalled a Hamlet lecture from my college days during which the professor played a cassette tape of a version of that soliloquy with a wretched shriek of the same line.  This particular speech lacked any realistic emotion.  Additionally, it was becoming ever more apparent that our Hamlet had trouble with the rhythm of Shakespearean English.  Think William Shatner doing Hamlet...with the stresses in all the wrong places.

The players--both of them--entered.  It was the smallest troupe I can recall seeing.  Budget constraints?  Smallpox?  Whatever the problem, the first player was the same actor who had played the ghost.  Strangely, Hamlet saw him and acted as if he recognized him as the ghost.  This made no sense at all.  The fact that one actor doubled the roles should not have become a plot point.  To wit, the actor played the priest during the funeral scene and seemingly was not recognized there, so why should it have happened at this point?  Odd direction.  The Priam speech and associated dialogue were edited.  Polonius interrupted, but there was no retort about his going to the barber.  It was another example of original Shakespearean humor being removed.

The "To be or not to be" soliloquy was forgettable, again marred by unbalanced and unbelievable delivery.  The nunnery scene began with Hamlet spying the fair Ophelia from across the stage.  The lights dipped, the music came up, and suddenly the two of them met at center stage for a quick dance, likely intended as a flashback to happier days.  For this audience member, it was a flashback to a previous Hamlet.  I knew that I had seen that before--at UB.  (See 3/14/18 post.)  Coincidence?  No.  As it turns out, the two productions share a director.  Learning that fact from the UB playbill answered many questions about this production.  The remainder of the nunnery scene was tolerable.  It was interesting, though, that the letters that Ophelia was returning to Hamlet were already ripped and crumpled.  Perhaps there had been an earlier lovers' quarrel?

On to "The Mousetrap" scene.  How does one remedy a troupe consisting of only two actors?  Put Rosencrantz into the play doing a dramatic reading for the part of the queen.  Oh boy.  There may have been a dumb show.  I'm not sure.  The trio did run out on stage to do something, but I couldn't tell what it was.  Maybe that's how Claudius missed it; he blinked.  My problem was the blocking.  Granted, a performance in the round requires special directorial effort.  It also requires understanding on the part of audience members that they will see faces only about 25% of the time.  For "The Mousetrap," I was unable to see any faces.  Polonius was directly in front of me (midway up the first base line), obscuring the actors in my sight line.  Claudius was in profile, everyone else was back to me or blocked entirely.  This problem completely destroyed any interest in the scene.  It is hard to relate to a character when all you see is the back of his head.  I did enjoy the reaction of the players at the abrupt end of the play.  Fearing for their lives, they fled quickly from the castle.  It is an open question from Shakespeare's original and a good directorial interpretation.  The first act ended at the witching time of night.

The second act provided more of the same.  Polonius was stabbed and managed to walk across stage to die in a sitting position in a chair.  The ghost appeared and enjoyed another hug with Hamlet, although the former was invisible (and incorporeal) to Gertrude.  As Hamlet headed to England, he delivered the "How all occasions" soliloquy.  Why?  Why?  Why?  As with the UB production, there was no context for this with all references to Fortinbras having been omitted.  It became just one more speech, delivered badly.  As Horatio read aloud his letter from Hamlet, Hamlet stood at center stage shadow-fencing.  Why?  Why not?  Ophelia's madness scene was well done, at least for the second half, with artificial plants and genuine emotion.

The graveyard scene used only one gravedigger, so the humorous conversation about the nature of Christian burial was gone.  He merely sang (?) while removing skulls from a cot (?) and setting them up at home plate (?).  Hamlet's interaction with the digger was shortened and also devoid of humor.  The "Alas Poor Yorick" speech came without suitable introduction, and the discussion continued to Alexander but stopped before bungholes.  The funeral consisted of Laertes and Hamlet fighting over Ophelia, who lied on a cot.

The downward slide continued.  Osric was entirely unnecessary.  He came with no hat, so that portion of the dialogue was out.  He seemed to be portrayed as menacing, not foppish, but he had not nearly enough lines to substantiate that characterization.  The fight was very well choreographed, with real swords and an actual fight.  It was suitably violent.  For as well done as the duel was, though, the resolution was unsatisfying.  Hamlet and Laertes both were poisoned as the unbated and envenomed sword somehow cut them through safety gloves and without visible blood.  Gertrude died and ended up on the furniture pile at second base.  Claudius was sliced on both calves, was made to drink from the poisoned chalice, and ended up supine atop the same furniture pile.  Laertes died on the ground between third and home.  Hamlet made it back to first base, emoted some more, declared that the rest was silence (Thank God!), and died atop that furniture pile.  Three hours (less a fifteen-minute intermission) after it had begun, we called it a day.

I had high hopes for this performance.  In the win column were the theatre environment and the choreography of the duel.  In the loss column was the acting, which, excepting Hamlet's chronic histrionics, was generally boring.  Some directorial decisions worked while others fell flat.  When all was over, this was simply a more stylish rehash of the director's previous effort at UB and one that showed many of the same issues as its predecessor.  No home run, it was nearly a strikeout.

R&G in CNY

The occasion of Record Store Day 2019 found me making a trip eastward to revisit the CNY Playhouse.  (Foul!  No non sequiturs.)  Last year it was their production of Hamlet.  (See 5/23/18 post.)  This year it was their production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  Unlike its predecessor, however, this year's attempt was not nearly as fulfilling.

My opening salvo in last year's review was regarding the venue.  The Shoppingtown Mall was even more deserted than it had been previously.  In fact, as I walked through it before the theatre doors opened, I discovered entire corridors devoid of stores and people.  It was a tad unsettling to say the least.  At least the bird droppings of last year had been cleaned up.

Part of the interest in seeing R&G live for the third time was to see how it would be handled vis a vis its Shakespearean counterpart.  The other times I had encountered R&G, in Oswego and Rochester, it was a part of repertory production.  As such, the casts and sets were similar.  With a one-year separation between CNY's shows, I wondered if this would be the case here.  It was not.  The set consisted of a largely bare stage with a stylishly torn curtain at the back and three large trunks/boxes at each side.  While a few of the actors had appeared in last year's production (with the director of R&G having played Rosencrantz), none were reprising their previous roles.  So this was an entirely separate work.

After pre-show audio consisting of a looped recording of ambient music and an actor speaking "The time is out of joint," the show began with our protagonists on stage, tossing coins.  Their costumes were modern items coordinated to look period--unremarkably adequate.  Unfortunately, the same could be said of the performances of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  The actors expressed good diction and generally were in command of their lines, with only a few stumbles noted.  As characters, though, they were unremarkably adequate; not bothersome, but not terribly interesting either.  The witticism for which the original play is noted became a casualty of the tepid delivery.  Yet, these roles were the highlight of the evening.

The remaining performances ranged from unpleasant to awful.  The Player was simply boring.  The direction called for the Hamlet roles to be performed as egregious slapstick, a decision that was questionable at best.  Claudius, for instance, ended up with lipstick on the right side of his head after a kiss from a slobberingly sottish Gertrude, and the lipstick remained for the evening.  The portrayal of Hamlet was dreadfully overdone.  Polonius, in a cheap-looking silvery-white wig, delivered most of his lines with his eyes closed, as if he could not bear to look.  I could not blame him on that count.  For a play that is reputed to be comedic, there was hardly any legitimate humor evident.  The actors merely chewed the scenery, and badly.  It was telling that the most audible laughter came from the rear of the house, where the crew were stationed.

The play was performed with one intermission.  The first intermission in Stoppard's original script was handled as a fade to black with some Hamlet lines piped in over the sound system.  The lights came up and went into the playwright's Act II.  The intermission in the CNY production came within Stoppard's Act II, at the blackout following the mock death scene and Guildenstern's speech about acting death.  It was roughly 90 minutes after the show had begun, although it had felt much longer.

The intermission usually provides the audience a chance to stretch, to refresh, and to reset itself for what is to come.  In this case and for this author, it was a chance to escape.  The realization that at least another hour remained of the advertised running time was too much to bear.  There was nothing about Act I that caused me to care in the least what happened to the characters.  The time would be (and was) much better spent in heading for home.

So I have no idea how this production of R&G ended.  Did our protagonists manage to avoid their title fate or did they lose their heads?  Did it really matter?  In my estimation, not particularly.  To borrow a phrase from the Ambassador, who may or may not have appeared the end of the play, the sight was dismal.