Hamlet – again (“O cursed spite …”)

I am just counting my blessings – and there are too many!? First the personal highlight of finally having seen “The Crucible” again, and now the Harold Pinter Theatre has announced that another one of my many favourite actors has joined the cast of “Uncle Vanya”:  Ciáran Hinds whom I should have “followed”, if not after I saw him as the only “viable” Mr. Rochester then certainly after playing the only duly impressive male character apart from Colin Firth in an adaptation of Jane Austen (as Captain Wentworth in “Persuasion”), or at least after he delighted me as Julius Caesar in “Rome”, but of course I did no such thing. There is just no time to follow all of them. Now he does me the favour and comes where I am going anyway – how very considerate of him!

(Of course I know that there is no way I will actually see all these eminent actors in February. As it appears at the moment, we can count on Brexit to find a way to prevent it. And I am uncomfortably aware that neither the pilots, nor crew, nor ground staff, nor security, nor flight controllers in Munich have been on strike for quite a long time … Hey guys - what about February?! And if neither of them will rise to the occasion I count on the S-Bahn to develop a malfunction of switch – as it did last time, but this time one lasting long enough to prevent me from actually getting to the airport. And if I should get to London against all the odds then certainly one of the actors will have the flu or something and be unable to play. And, by the way, I could catch the flu myself, though I never do … Well, we’ll see when the time comes! I’ll just continue to be organized and ruthless - and patient, of course - and to expect the RIGHT things. Then good things will eventually happen.)

And these are not even all of my blessings!!! Somebody has been able to furnish us with a recording of “Hamlet” with Andrew Scott by the Almeida Theatre. After having seen bits on YouTube,  this became number three on my wish list for productions I wanted to see or see again (or, ideally, have on DVD!!!). (1 = “The Crucible”, 2 = “Richard III” with Ralph Fiennes, also by the Almeida Theatre! So, definitely: they should put their stuff on Digital Theatre, or something like this, as far as I am concerned … Or make DVDs. I know, nobody but me needs DVDs anymore! There aren’t even any new notebooks on offer with a DVD drive, which is shit!) Now I have been granted two of my greatest wishes, and who can beat that? (Except, maybe, actually seeing Richard Armitage on the stage in February. Though it appears unlikely, it isn’t an UNREASONABLE thing to wish for.)

Bad news first: It wasn’t actually THAT great. After having started amazingly, the play kind of fizzled out – as “Hamlet” always does, at least in my experience. So, as far as I am concerned, a really great production of “Hamlet” doesn’t exist yet – and probably never will because, as I have to admit: I just DON’T LIKE the play! So it might be impossible anyway to procure a production that I will be satisfied with. And this cannot be helped. Claudia, for example, doesn’t like “King Lear” – which is not one of my favourite plays either, but I don’t mind it. And there are bits in it that I really like - which I cannot say about Hamlet. So I decided – yet another time! – to skip it. But – “cursed spite”! - Andrew Scott (and Juliet Stevenson!) on YouTube convinced me that I might have missed (for the umpteenth time!) some really important “bit” of Shakespeare. Now I am stuck again with this play that I never wanted to read in the first place – and which I always end up reading anyway, already at uni! - instead of reading “Coriolanus”, which I have wanted to do for months, and then, if I will ever get through with it, or at least as of next year: “Uncle Vanya”. (But of course I want to get through with “Coriolanus” because I am getting more and more curious about “Uncle Vanya”. Now all this has to be delayed indefinitely …)

“O cursed spite!” is all I am saying. “Hamlet” has always been an inconvenience, but I also get this feeling every time that I usually get with Shakespeare – and which usually turns out to be right – that it is ME who must be wrong about this … And, besides, there was this singular opportunity that we both – Claudia and I – wanted to see this play AT THE SAME TIME and FOR THE SAME REASON. (We often are interested in the same things – which is why we went together to Stratford to see “Macbeth” last year, and are planning to see “Uncle Vanya” next year – but it usually turns out that there are very different reasons for us to see somethings, or different expectations (for example, where “Macbeth” was concerned), which makes it unlikely that we actually end up reading “the same text”. Which is just what USUALLY happens. I was pleasantly surprised when we talked about “The Crucible” again – after me having seen it a second time and managed to get rid of my erratic and extremely subjective first reading! – and I got the impression that we actually might be talking about THE SAME TEXT!)

In this case, Claudia saw “Hamlet” first and actually wrote down her first impressions WHILE SEEING IT. After that I HAD to put back everything else and watch it on the first occasion – at the end of a really stressful weekend, in the middle of a developing family crisis – and, on the next day, put everything on hold at work – where there are quite a few unresolved issues as well at the moment - and write an answer.

Of course there was more and more to say and to discover, so I decided to dedicate my unexpectedly empty weekend to it and watch the play again on Saturday evening. On Sunday I woke at four in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep – not because of the brewing family crisis, or stuff at work, or because I need to buy a new computer … but because I had to think through the political dimension of “Hamlet”!!! “O cursed spite” ... I wasn’t that much better pleased with the production, seeing it a second time, maybe even less so, but it became genuinely INTERESTING nonetheless.

So, I get no choice. I will have to spend this beautiful Sunday entirely at my computer and begin to summarize what we came up with. Beginning with the actors …

… which is important in this case, as, I expect, will become obvious later. We were both mostly pleased with them, I think, with the exception of Andrew Scott. I suppose, if one just sees the YouTube video with the one monologue on it – and the very beautiful bedchamber scene with Hamlet’s mother – one focuses on the exceptional thing he does, and expectations get raised that can never be met. Seeing the complete play, one becomes aware that he has a very monotonous style of acting with mostly unattractive features, as speaking affectedly and unduly pronounced face acting and gesticulating. Nonetheless I was PREPARED to see through this – and this was probably the only reason why I did. Only if one is prepared to get past the unpleasantness, it is possible to see what he is trying to achieve with his style of acting. And actually does achieve, in my opinion. Since Lucian Msamati as Iago and Christopher Eccleston as Macbeth I have become really interested in singular and unusual ways of dealing with Shakespeare text because I perceived their style of acting as a way to “penetrate” the text – not just to display it brilliantly, as, for example, Benedict Cumberbatch did as Hamlet – and so get unexpectedly close to the “immediate” human content just underneath the beautiful surface. In Hamlet’s case this is especially important and particularly difficult. I don’t think that playing Hamlet “naturally” could really work – but of course I don’t know this because I haven’t seen it. (And I am looking forward to Claudia contradicting me.) The reason why I appreciate Andrew Scott’s acting – event though I don’t like it – is because he realized that he had to ANALYZE the text in some way to make it work. As he is probably skilled at mime, he uses it systematically to “translate” Shakespeare text. Which is kind of ridiculous because it cannot work, but nonetheless it conveys this impression that the text is getting CREATED just as he is speaking it. And this, very strangely, creates this feeling of spontaneity and authenticity which I found so striking watching the bits on YouTube. But, going on over some time, it gets irritating and tedious.

We were mostly pleased with the other actors in substantial roles, maybe with the exception of Jessica Brown Findlay as Ophelia. She was kind of stiff and affected but did alright, and was able to express the important things that are going on between her and Hamlet and within the Polonius family. So, didn’t bungle anything. And maybe Angus Wright as Claudius who, as Claudia put it, “did everything right” but appeared kind of unattractive as an actor – somebody whom you don’t really notice if you don’t have to. I kind of liked him, though, being so precise and unobtrusive because I have seen a range of fundamentally different versions of this character (among others by Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart (twice!), and Ciáran Hinds) and – even though I liked this - it didn’t really make a difference to my understanding of the play. So, in this case, I just didn’t have to bother with Claudius and could concentrate on the main issues.

Same reason why I liked Peter Wight as Polonius. Apart from the fact that I was really pleased - having seen him in so many series and one of my favourite films “Another year”, mostly playing unattractive supporting roles – to see him “looking so good” in Shakespeare. The fact that I remembered his name when I saw him told me that I “filed” him among the relevant actors – without thinking a great deal about it. Playing Polonius completely unobtrusively and naturally – as a loving and concerned father – but with a very exact and complete understanding of the person he was playing, as he always has, felt exactly right in this context.

Best comes last: I was really, really pleased to see Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude – as I had anticipated seeing that scene on YouTube. Uncontestedly: best actor on that stage - and some of the best Shakespeare I have seen. The first time I saw the play I couldn’t look away and noticed everything she was doing, and that made my perception of the play more than a bit biased. But the second time I watched it I was used to it and noticed that she did the same thing as everybody else (except Andrew Scott): being incredibly precise and doing everything right – except she made sure that everybody NOTICED! I think – even though I was already well aware that she is a great actress – I actually saw her play “something big” for the first time quite recently in the BBC series “Accused”, and was genuinely pleased – and moved! But she is obviously one of these actors that thrive on the stage and get twice - or ten times - as “big” as on the screen, and who really enjoy to throw themselves into it and do all kinds of physical stuff. Amazing! (This is even one of the things why I like the Brits so much that they can do almost anything they want without antagonizing me: that a woman with a face like a horse and piggy eyes, and a body like a broomstick (sorry, that was overdoing it a bit for the effect!) can star on TV and on the stage, and gets to play characters that we actually empathize with – just because she is SO GOOD!)

So, that’s it for now. But – cursed spite! – I will have to continue immediately and get to the actual points we discussed. (If I don’t, I’ll never get to read “Uncle Vanya” …)

Postscript on „The Crucible“ – and tragedy

For future reference: I WILL NEVER AGAIN SAY THAT I AM THROUGH WITH A FICTIONAL TEXT.

I met with Claudia for breakfast on Tag der Deutschen Einheit (October 3^rd) to plan our theatre trip in February. YESSS! We have got tickets for “Uncle Vanya”, and I sorted the credit card shit and applied for a passport. So I should be “Brexit proof” now. (As usual, I don’t really believe that I will actually see it until I see it, but at least I have left no stone unturned …)

This, and seeing “The Crucible” again, has obviously dispersed the black mood. I fully realized this only when I went to see my mother on the weekend, and she said: “O, you are always so cheerful, and this cheers ME up.” O – good! I wasn’t aware that my permanent inward grin showed on my face. And I really wish that people might see some time what they are doing not just for themselves but FOR OTHERS when they make the world a more beautiful place. It’s contagious …

At the moment it isn’t even that I am ”actively” looking forward to seeing Richard Armitage on the stage – which I cannot do because of the surprise factor. I got used to it that I can never know WHAT KIND of surprise it will be. I will have to be patient (which I can do extremely well …) Instead I have begun to look forward very much to seeing Toby Jones in Chekhov. I became increasingly fond of him as an actor during the last few years, having seen him play substantial characters in “Sherlock”, “The Tale of Tales”, and the TV series “Capital”.  I think I have never realized how much I enjoy his acting until recently when I saw him in a really tiny role in “The Way We Live Now” with David Suchet as Augustus Melmotte (gruesomely good!!!) where he played the lawyer Squercum for about thirty seconds, and I just went like 😍 … Blink!!! I imagine that he and Chekhov will get on extremely well.

Well, we’ll see … As usual, at this breakfast meeting we had an extensive exchange about our reading in the meantime, and of course I reported about seeing “The Crucible” on Digital Theatre, probably with little lights blinking in my eyes. And I realized even more what I had realized writing my post about it: that I had tried to look away from tragedy and its potential to overwhelm me to get a clearer look at the complete picture. It actually was a good idea to focus on tragedy AS A VEHICLE to carry the content Arthur Miller wanted to convey, not as an end in itself. But of course this was just a working hypothesis for me to be able to analyze it more comprehensively. Because, when we talked, Claudia said something that brought tragedy back with full force and answered practically everything that was still open about my reading of this text, and why it is actually as important as I felt it was. And it answered one of the most important questions that I have carried with me “all my life” – more precisely: since I have been a teenager. As it happens, I remember my first encounter with TRAGEDY extremely well …

(It was actually quite ridiculous – which may be why I remember it so well. It must have been when I was thirteen or fourteen because, before that, I would have been too young to read something from “Nibelungensage” in school, and after that I would have been too old to want to play it. We read this bit in class where Hagen of Tronje decides to kill Siegfried, and I was ultimately fascinated with it. I remember it because I wanted to go out into the garden and play it – as this was what my sister and I always did when we liked something we had seen or read, though, usually, it was about keeping horses or living on some Swedish island … - and realized that I couldn’t. This was really frustrating, as I recall. And I even remember that I knew I was being ridiculous but wanted to do it NONETHELESS. I think this was because I was totally fascinated with the tragic content of this scene, and utterly frustrated that I couldn’t DO anything with it.) 

Tragedy came back with a vengeance when Claudia recalled having seen “Antigone” with Christopher Eccleston as Kreon. And when she remembered how she COULDN’T ACCEPT the decision Antigone takes. At this moment, I suddenly realized what, above all other things, had been wrong with the film version of “The Crucible” and what had been so right in this theatre production: There MUST be this moment where “we” are unable to ACCEPT the decision John Proctor takes. Not being unable to UNDERSTAND it – because I think I actually did, this time. I mean, I completely understood how he comes to MAKE this decision but, nonetheless, was unable to accept it. And, if I got this right, we had both felt the same.

Maybe there hadn’t even been anything wrong with the film, only with my READING of it. There might have been a moment like this when I saw it half a lifetime ago, but it got “cancelled” by something that they often do in films, and which cannot happen in the theatre. There was this kind of postscript where they explain that a certain number of people declined to sign the false confessions and got executed, and that, because of the way people reacted to this, they had to stop the trials. Historically speaking, this is extremely important information, and it is extremely comforting. Because, all of a sudden, this agonizing decision we see John Proctor struggling with on the stage begins to MAKE SENSE. And I think this is exactly what Arthur Miller went to such lengths to AVOID. That “we” would be able to do what we are always trying to do with tragedy. He wanted this moment where we are totally unable to accept the “tragic” decision because we understand that it has nothing to do with heroism. It may seem so AFTERWARDS, for the “survivors”, but at the moment it happens there is no solace in being heroic. There is our “goodness”, or decency, or humanity, or whatever we want to call it, to fall back on JUST because there is NOTHING ELSE. I always felt that Antigone’s sacrifice is absurd and unnecessary, and AT THE SAME TIME totally understood why she does it. It only makes sense if we understand that it is ABOUT HERSELF, not about any other person or any greater good that she wants to achieve. It is just that what is at the core of her being would be annihilated if she gave in. SHE would be annihilated even BEFORE her death.

But the actual point of tragedy – as something that happens on a stage! - is not to understand but to EXPERIENCE it. When Claudia said that she remembered how SHE couldn’t accept Antigone’s decision I knew that something had HAPPENED when she saw that play and realized that it was the same thing that happened when I saw John Proctor taking this decision. And that this was why the production finally turned out so right.

I think I got it now what it was about when Richard Armitage said that he didn’t know if he could do it. That it was not just some kind of “inverse” motivation thing – to make the stakes higher so that he would leap higher – but actually the truth of the matter. As he said, he had a history with this character. What we saw on the stage had been “in the making” for twenty-three years or so, and it shows! He knew better than anybody else where he had to go, but you can ANTICIPATE something like this as much as you want, you only know the moment it has happened that it actually CAN happen.  And having achieved something like this, having been there FOR REAL, probably makes the emotional chasm in the aftermath unavoidable. It is even very likely that it has been the same chasm for both of us, regarding my own obsession with tragedy. And this wouldn’t have been the least bit weird or special, by the way, because tragedy is (still!) extremely consensual. It is really very seldom that I feel Claudia and I totally agree about something we have seen, even though we have established such an efficient way of talking about it. But where great tragedy is concerned, it is rather likely that many people who saw it would have ended up in the same place.

This finally concludes the issue of why this text has been so special for me – from the time when I first saw the film. What the long history that I had with it was ultimately about.  And why it has obviously been so special for many people, and still is. But it also answers one of the big questions I tried to come to terms with in my blog: What tragedy is about, and why it still is the “format” we use to discuss certain important content that cannot be dealt with by just thinking about it.

I realized that I had been SO close already, discussing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and how they react differently to their lives having become “tragic”. I think I even wrote this already, word for word, but didn’t quite understand what I was writing. Tragedy is about ACCEPTING THE UNACCEPTABLE.  Which means, when tragedy turns out ultimately beautiful and rewarding it has to be there FOR REAL: the moment where we CANNOT accept what is happening, and THEN accept it.

It is a blatant contradiction, and I think this is even the most important thing about it. Contradictions  are not only one of the most fascinating challenges of philosophy, they are one of the basic structures of real life. Most of the times when we cannot resolve an issue by thinking, or by just dealing with it, there is probably some kind of “genuine” contradiction behind it. I believe that the tragic is still so important because it is the ONLY technique that “we” have ever learned of dealing emotionally with a certain kind of ubiquitous contradiction. I just hit on this great synopsis of the tragic constellation by Vampire Weekend in their song “Harmony Hall”:

“I don’t want to live like this. But I don’t want to die.”

I loved it because it is delivered so casually, kind of deadpan – but most of all because it shows that the “tragic” is in fact a feature of everyday life, not just this far out situation at the end of all things that will hopefully never arise because we will drop dead before it does. No - It is kind of THE underlying structure of our lives. (Or at least one of the most important ones. I am afraid the RIDICULOUS might be the underlying structure of our lives, most of the time. I am just not prepared to look at it like this, most of the time. And quite often they lie close together - as in the song!) And we ARE dealing with it all the time, of course, depending on the nature of the situation: by not taking it seriously, by fighting like mad to get ourselves out of this position (Which is, by the way, the BIGGER part of tragic storytelling, basically the complete “Macbeth”: how we get ourselves into a deadly fix and are struggling in vain to get ourselves out of it. Thinking about it, I find it interesting that Chris Eccleston gave his Macbeth a very brief, very matter of fact moment of acceptance – which is NOT in the text …), or by being able to find that there is a “third way”. Even most of the time, like myself, by cowardly avoiding everything that could get us into one of these positions. Or, if it has happened already, by starting to “need the things that stop you dreaming” (Passenger) or making the awful mess we are in a more comfortable place in one of a hundred other ways - by lying about it to others and to ourselves, by taking drugs, by falling back on stoicism, or self-pity, or irony, or deadpan … But I am convinced that, deep down, “we” are all extremely aware that this moment WILL come where nothing of this will work anymore. When we will have to make this leap: to ACCEPT the unacceptable. And then it just MIGHT be that we find our own “goodness” underneath it all. This may seem ridiculously elevated, but I believe that - IF we haven’t “sold out” before the end! - we actually might.