Gielgud on Hamlet

Following Rosamund Gilder's description of Sir John Gielgud's performance of Hamlet (see 3/29/15 post) was Gielgud's own essay on Hamlet.  His work, entitled "The Hamlet Stage Tradition," struck me immediately as very similar to this blog.  Gielgud describes various productions of Hamlet that he has seen and has studied, detailing the ways in which Shakespeare's work has been realized by different directors and actors.

Gielgud's essay is divided into sections based on specific scenes of the play.  In his discussion of the scene in which Hamlet is informed of the ghost, he relates his feelings on the popularity of Hamlet.  "It may seem lazy for an actor to copy 'business' or readings from other actors, but I do not believe that one should ever discard tradition without examining its purposes and inspiration."  Further, he comments "I see no possible harm in reading about all these traditional or sensational innovations, and borrowing or discarding them as they seem to fit the character, the play, and the meaning of the text, as long as one does this sincerely and without losing sight of one's own original play and characterization."  An actor portraying Hamlet should be aware of what has gone before him (or her), but that does not mean necessarily copying what has been done.

Later in the same section, he describes the effect of the play on the audience, especially one who has seen Hamlet on more than one occasion.  "Afterwards the spectator may remember and record certain vivid impressions, but probably if he goes again to see the same performance--indeed, even if he sees rehearsals and watches a performance every night--he will never again receive exactly the same impression."  Each performance has its own unique virtue, as one who has read the posts on this blog hopefully will understand.

In a discussion of Act III, Scene i, Gielgud relates the experience of performing the "To be or not to be" soliloquy in front of an audience familiar with it.  Such familiarity he calls "an utter curse."  Gielgud names his two worst phobias in a performance of Hamlet:  "Leica cameras and the quoting of famous passages aloud."  Had this 1957 essay been written today, the former fear might be changed to smartphones, but speaking aloud is still a omnipresent phenomenon.  (I will admit to being guilty of mouthing certain lines during the play.  It's a bad habit.)

While commenting on Ophelia's death, Gielgud raises a valid point that I had not really considered.  Gertrude's announcement of Ophelia's drowning "is absurd, for if the Queen or anybody else had seen the drowning in such detail, obviously something would have been done to prevent it."  The entire enterprise is less a realistic retelling than Shakespeare using "the Greek messenger method of describing an important incident happening off-stage...."

These are only a few of the numerous interesting viewpoints that Sir John Gielgud brings to his discussion of Hamlet.  It is a treat to be able to read the words of both a scholar and a veteran Hamlet himself, and it makes the blogger wish even more that he had been able to see Gielgud's performance on stage.

*Quotes from Interpreting Hamlet, pp. 138-172.

Shostakovich on Hamlet

In a previous post (1/25/15) I mentioned a quote from the current Folger Library edition of Hamlet.  The quote, from Vsevolod Meyerhold, was taken from Testimony:  The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich.  I found a copy of the book on the shelf of a local library and decided to see what else the book might say about Hamlet.  It was an interesting discovery, to say the least.

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.

An Historical Interlude

At the outset, 100+ posts ago, this was to be a blog about Hamlet.  Even he would admit, though, that there are more things in heaven and earth than his play.  After the Fathom Events broadcast of the Stratford Festival production of King Lear (see 3/8/15 post), I was hooked.  The second installment, King John, was shown on 4/8/15.  Time to broaden the horizons just a bit more.

I knew nothing of the play beforehand.  It was not part of any high school or college discussion that I could recall.  So I did some preliminary research.  The first book I consulted was The Friendly Shakespeare by Norrie Epstein (Penguin Books, 1993).  The outlook was not promising.  The book included only minimal references to the work.  The appraisal: "most unfamiliar and disliked play in the canon" (153) and "isn't all that interesting" (159).  Those dismissals served only to whet my appetite.

The next source was the play itself in The Arden Shakespeare.  The editor's commentary was a bit more helpful.  "John is sometimes a conventionally dignified monarch and at others a mean and treacherous man, realistically portrayed" (E.A.J. Honigmann, 1965, pg. lxvi, note 4).  The introductory essays discussed dichotomies in the play and the question of the hero.  The editor concluded that King John was the"first of Shakespeare's plays which contemporaries thought good enough for plagiarism" (lxxiii).  That was good enough for me.

The production was excellent!  Tom McCamus in the title role was tremendous; at turns likable, laughable, detestable, pitiable, sociopathic.  His was a wonderful stage presence.  The overall acting and direction were very well done, what I am discovering to be a hallmark of Stratford Festival productions.  It is a different play than Hamlet.  The set requires very little decoration.  The two acts were really just two long scenes.  I will say that the dance number that concluded the play (a directorial addition) was a bit odd, but it added some flavor.

For a first foray into King John, I was suitably impressed with the play.  Bah to the so-called "Friendly" interpretation!  My vote for hero of the play is England itself.  The country has to suffer through the reign of King John, war, conflict, murder, religious scandal and yet it does not collapse.  The call to arms at the end certainly serves as a testament to her resolve.

Thanks to Hamlet for leading me on the path to discovering more of Shakespeare's work!  (It even led me to a slight revision to the blog's subtitle.)  While the next post will return to the usual topic, there promise to be other plays ahead.

Hamlet in Twin Peaks?

Spring Break arrived, and with it came a trip to NYC to see Hamlet.  This was the aforementioned Classic Stage Company production starring Peter Sarsgaard (see 3/1/15 post).  Granted, it wasn't quite a spring day--cold, windy, slightly rainy--but no matter.  Seeing Hamlet live is enough to brighten even a crummy New York day.

The theatre is a small, comfortable, very intimate space.  In fact, it felt as if I were in someone's living room watching the play.  The sight-lines were excellent looking straight on.  A side view might have been a different story.  The staff were pleasant and helpful, even if one star-struck usher forgot to keep patrons off the set during intermission.  I'm not sure about the theatre's house rules.  For a show billed as starting promptly, it started late due to patrons who could not manage to get seated for a 7 p.m. curtain.  Were I the manager, they would have watched Act I from the lobby.

The set was minimal.  It consisted of a round dining room table center stage.  A round table on a square stage with audience members on three sides.  Audience members will get to see the actors' backs.  Interesting blocking choice.  There were bottles and glasses of wine everywhere.  Upstage, set back in the corners, were two fully-stocked bars that were used throughout the show.  This was a production that believed in drinking deeply!  Some white leather sectional couches formed corners of a square space bottomed with a white tile floor.  A floral overhang provided a nice touch, even if it did not figure into the show at all.  With the lack of scenery, much was left to the imagination.  The costuming was modern and did not change throughout the night.  It was as if each actor could be afforded only one suit of clothes.

Now to the show itself.  As I pondered how to describe it, various descriptors came to mind.  Surreal.  Kafka-esque.  A mess.  Then the fellow seated next to me mentioned something during intermission--Twin Peaks.  The TV show was a perfect parallel!  This was David Lynch takes on Shakespeare.  If a giant or a dancing dwarf had appeared during Act II, it would not have been at all surprising, and it might have helped.

The opening scene was poorly lit.  It was impossible to see faces on the castle battlements.  No ghost appeared.  The characters claimed to see him, but the audience did not.  OK, nothing too crazy there.  Give it time, I thought.

The casting was bizarre to say the least.  The first sight--Gertrude was OLD.  Very old.  She could have been a grandmother to Hamlet, but doubtfully the mother of a college-age student.  I found her performance to be the worst of the bunch.  Her manner of speaking was not at all believable or sympathetic, it was just dreadful.  Claudius was OLD, to match his wife.  Polonius was reasonably old.  Laertes, too, was OLD.  Hamlet even was older than expected.  Ophelia was a more suitable age.  One actor played Reynaldo & Guildenstern & Lucianus & the Priest & Fortinbras.  Another played Barnardo & Voltemand & First Player & Player King & Captain & an unbilled Osric.  These might have worked if they ever changed costume.  They didn't.  Instead they moved from part to part as if we could tell a difference by occasional changes in diction.  Again, imagination.  And perhaps that same imagination could excuse the whiny, wussy, petulant tone of Hamlet's voice or the way the actors repeatedly stumbled over their lines.  Let's just pretend it's otherwise.

One directorial touch became apparent early on.  "Exit" meant "move to the background."  Characters who were not involved in the action moved to the back of the stage.  Sometimes, they stayed in the midst of the action as it occurred around them.  For the "O that this too too solid flesh" soliloquy, Ophelia sat at the table while Hamlet whined/orated--to her, to the audience.  Was she listening?  Was she somewhere else and we were seeing a meshing of the two scenes?  Huh?  All the while, there was background music with a heavy bass beat.  I thought that there must have been a night club next door holding a rave, but I think it was part of the play.  Or was it?  Confusion was to become a common theme.

Hamlet hears about the appearance of his father's ghost.  He joins his friends to see it.  And yet...  No ghost.  In fact, no scene at all.  It was edited out of the play.  Apparently this was a directorial decision made in order that "everybody gets to be seen in some kind of dimension."  (And yet two actors play eleven parts interchangeably?)  How is the audience to know what is said?  Apparently, we're not.  So are we to know that Hamlet's father was murdered?  Had I never seen or read Hamlet before, this would have been an interesting way to experience it.  As it was, though, confusion.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  As the two are seated with Hamlet at the table, they join together in a customary snort of cocaine.  Really?  Yes, really.  So perhaps this entire play is really just the drug-addled nightmare of its principal character.  Hmmm.

The arrival of the players was cause for more overacting.  The ham-handed speech did not bring the actor to genuine tears, but Polonius thought so.  Hamlet seemed unmoved as he sat immediately to my right, close enough that his Rolex was visible.  What followed was more oddity.  "Now I am alone."  Well, no he wasn't.  The player remained on stage and Hamlet delivered the "rogue and peasant slave" soliloquy to him.  That was followed by the request for the player to insert a speech into "The Murder of Gonzago."

Hamlet's comment to Horatio about "playing something like the murder of my father" made for interesting theatre.  Remember, this is the first we're hearing of murder.  The ghost never appeared to us.  How were we to know?  Was it supposed to be a surprise?  Is the assumption that the audience has never seen this play before?  Confusion.

Speaking of confusion, the "To be or not to be" soliloquy came next.  This time, though, it was not a soliloquy.  Hamlet delivered it to Ophelia.  Strange.  Then he had his violent outburst during the nunnery scene.  The dining room table became the object of his aggression as wine bottles and glasses were spilled and wine ended up everywhere.  That was followed by a hammy outburst from Ophelia about a noble mind being o'erthrown.  And we were left with the first act completed and prop techs cleaning the mess (and breaking more glasses themselves).

Act Two began with "The Mousetrap."  Ophelia sat with Polonius.  Hamlet sat alone.  There was no dumb show.  The lady did protest too much, but she didn't protest anymore than did Gertrude every time she spoke.  Ugh.  When subsequently Hamlet thought "Now might I do it," it was while touching Claudius (?!) and holding a steak knife.  Not much of a weapon, but it was enough to dispatch Polonius through the arras upstage.  When Polonius died, he walked across stage.  Wait.  Was he a ghost?  We can see his ghost but not that of Hamlet's father (who did not appear at all during the closet scene)?  Confusing.

Ophelia's madness was happily not overly violent and psychotic.  Rather, it was suitably pathetic, until she grabbed a sword that was under the couch and tried to off herself.  Laertes, who had reappeared in exactly the same garb he had worn when he left for Paris, saved her from herself.  This begs the question, though, as to whether her subsequent drowning death could be considered accidental.  She certainly showed overt suicidal tendencies here.  Hmmm.  The graveside scene, with one gravedigger, apparent ghostly apparitions of Ophelia and Polonius and no actual grave, was marked by a ridiculously over-the-top reaction by Laertes.  Please.

The duel scene meant that we were nearing the end of the evening.  There had been no build-up to the plot, though.  Laertes and Claudius never discussed it in our listening.  Just as they were about to hatch it, Gertrude had entered to share news of Ophelia's death.  So is the audience expected to know that there is something amiss?  Again, confusion.  (And was Gertrude really sitting at table listening to Hamlet's story of escaping death in England?)

The lame fencing duel led to the biggest gaffe that I have ever seen on a Hamlet stage.  While preparing the chalice, Claudius poured wine from one bottle into a goblet.  Then he topped it off with wine from a second bottle.  (These people and their wine.  It's a wonder the cast is not drunk at the end of a show!)  Into the glass went the requisite pearl.  The glass was set by a while.  Hamlet wiped his brow with a napkin and threw it over the poisoned goblet.  When Gertrude drank, SHE DRANK FROM THE WRONG CUP!  She drank from a glass of wine left from previous scenes.  The poisoned cup was still below the napkin.  Was all of the wine on the table poisoned?  Was Gertrude faking her own death?  That this happened is indicative of the confusion that reigned throughout the production.  Had there not been wine glasses everywhere, this might have been avoided.  Instead, it was a laughable slip-up.

Hamlet was hit with an obviously bated sword that was "unbated."  Laertes fell on the sword and when it was pulled out from under him it apparently sliced his belly through four layers of clothing.  Gertrude died (or did she?) but kept breathing.  Laertes died but kept breathing.  Claudius drank purposefully from the real poisoned goblet, died and kept moving.  Hamlet snatched the goblet from Horatio, drank some more, died and kept staring straight ahead.  Fortinbras, one of that actor's five parts, arrived to clean up and to bid the soldiers to shoot.  And then the rest really was silence.

That brought the CSC excursion (and brings this extended review) to an end.  It was truly a unique evening of theatre, although the adjective is not meant entirely as a compliment.  While I give credit to the director for trying something new, what resulted was a confused, Kafka-esque, Lynchian mess.  Cue the dancing dwarf.

Gilder on Gielgud

The essay collection Interpreting Hamlet (see 2/8/15 post) provided yet another review of a past production.  This time it was Rosamond Gilder's introduction to her 1957 work entitled John Gielgud's Hamlet.  It is advertised as a "line-by-line record of a distinguished performance," that of Sir John Gielgud in the title role.  While the thought of reading another dated review with little hope of seeing the production live was not terribly enticing, the essay is terrific in what it says about Hamlet as work of art.

Gilder's opening line catches the reader immediately, much like the play she describes.  "For over three hundred and thirty years Hamlet has held the world in thrall."   From there, she continues with descriptions as accurate now as they were 58 years ago.

"A stage success when it was written, the 'Standing Room Only' sign records its drawing power today.  It triumphs over time and change because, more than any other single creation of man's mind, it is a living organism, complex and passionate, ugly and exalted, defying final analysis and permitting each succeeding generation to re-create it in its own image.  The theatre grapples with it continuously, dressing it in every conceivable garb, ancient, modern and imaginary.  Every actor, man or woman, lusts for it.  The scholars snatch it from the players and retire with it like quarrelsome bears into remote fortresses of words, definitions, factual and fantastic interpretations.  Children feed their love of beautiful sounds on its music and wise men spend their lives analyzing the meaning of a single phrase."

It is a beautiful description of the play, and I would say a fitting summary of this blog.  The mutability of Hamlet, for better or worse, is the recurring theme of many of the posts herein.  How is it that a play can be so transformed and so transformative?  How has the play survived?

"It survives because Hamlet himself has never yet been caught, because he springs from the pins with which the pedant would fix him on the dissecting board, breaks the mould in which the critic would cast him, and refuses to conform to any formula yet proposed by any one age or generation."

The remainder of the brief introduction describes both the play in general and Gielgud's particular performance in it.  Gilder discusses the editing of lines, omission of soliloquies and other staging concerns while relating them to the production she is reviewing.

This brief essay did two things well.  It captured John Gielgud's performance, making me wish that there were an easy way to travel back to 1957 to see it done live.  (Perhaps there is a video out there somewhere.)  Additionally, it provided a great summary of a great play, suitable for sharing with fellow Hamlet fans who might read this.

Coming to a Cinema Near You

Another Internet search, another lucky strike.  The announcement that Benedict Cumberbatch would play Hamlet in a production at the Barbican Theatre in London was big news.  It became one of the most in-demand tickets ever, and shows sold out nearly immediately--100,000 tickets gone in minutes.

Don't worry, Hamlet fans!  If you didn't manage to get tickets or wouldn't have been able to travel to London for the show anyway, there's still hope.  The production is being broadcast on cinema screens around the world, courtesy of National Theatre Live.  The show is set for an October 15th debut, with the possibility of encore presentations based on demand.  Check the NT Live website to find a cinema near you.  Tickets may be on sale in your area.

October 15th.  It may be seven months away, but it's never to early to begin inquiries.

Reviews of Hamlet

I've begun wading through the book Interpreting Hamlet, mentioned in a previous post (2/8/15).  Several of the early essays are reviews of different actors performing the title role on stage.  While these may have been interesting when they were current, I found them to be not so much now.  If I were acting the part myself, then it might be a different story.  Would I want to read up on how other actors had conceived the part, or would I want to go in fresh and not be influenced or run the risk of copycatting?

William Winter's review of Sir Henry Irving does include some commentary that caught my attention.  Winter notes that Hamlet "should be deduced from the play as it stands in its mature form...he must yet be presented with a certain vagueness."  He treats briefly the question of Hamlet's madness and love.  Is each real or feigned?  "The important thing," as he notes, "is to grasp Hamlet's experience as a whole, to absorb it into our knowledge, to bring it home to our own hearts...."

In George Bernard Shaw's review of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, he notes the following about the importance of the actor.

"It is wonderful how easily everything comes right when you have the right man with the right mind for it--how the story tells itself, how the characters come to life, how even the failures in the cast cannot confuse you, though they may disappoint you."

I will conclude with a quotation from William Winter's essay, which speaks to the ability of Hamlet--and analysis of the play--to withstand the tests of time.

"When the human soul and its relations to the universe are entirely understood, Hamlet will be entirely understood--and not till then."