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” …)