June 16, 2009
Phew! It was at quite a lick (less than 90 minutes), but despite some savage cutting – disembowelling even - the verse-speaking of this gifted, fluent cast of seven was superbly intelligent, wringing eloquence and contemporaneity from the most pared down – and idiosyncratic – of text cuts from director Barney Norris’ red-tipped dagger.
Hamlet (excellent Tom Brady) hit lots of hot buttons – particularly those of his hooded eyed stepfather (magisterial Jonathan Webb) - with unerring accuracy. Brady’s immensely mobile features screwed up and released like a sea anemone, as he spewed out mockery, rage – then tenderness and aching sadness and vulnerability. Armed only with a pair of puppets, which he manipulated with a showman’s aplomb, he gave a whole new meaning to ‘in your face’. And that’s where he was, continually and fearlessly, while Claudius watched, brooding, sinister but unflinchingly recognising – and acting to eliminate - the threat behind the jibes.
Women do badly in the testosterone-soaked, locked-antler atmosphere of Elsinore: Gertrude’s beauty (Alice Hamilton) and Ophelia’s child-like frailty (Georgia Sawyer) seem to have little impact on the deadly Machiavellian game being played out under the soaring Gothic arches of Wadham Chapel. After she's used as bait to trap Hamlet, Polonius (punctilious and watchful George Duncan Jones) does at least extend an arm around his trembling daughter, her huge brown eyes gazing in dark terror, her fingers twisting the ringlets of her doll’s hair.
Grandeur and beauty apart, the echoing stone flags and the dancing patterns of dappled sunlight through stained glass, motes of dust rising as Hamlet wrestles a muscular Laertes (Will McCallum) in Ophelia’s lavender-strewn tomb have nothing of softness, and it is in Horatio (Matthew Ward), that most tenderness, friendship and loyalty is expressed.
The duck and dive exchanges reflected the front doors just slammed in Brown’s Britain, whether Castle or semi: the claustrophobia of family and teenage alienation. Indeed, Norris describes Hamlet as ‘children running amok.’ Two families, one intruder (Horatio) and the very domestic distractions that end up toppling a nation. This was Norris’ vision. I feel Hamlet is a lot more than that. But for this evening, in the warm summer’s rose-scented light – it was enough for now. Go see.
Hamlet (excellent Tom Brady) hit lots of hot buttons – particularly those of his hooded eyed stepfather (magisterial Jonathan Webb) - with unerring accuracy. Brady’s immensely mobile features screwed up and released like a sea anemone, as he spewed out mockery, rage – then tenderness and aching sadness and vulnerability. Armed only with a pair of puppets, which he manipulated with a showman’s aplomb, he gave a whole new meaning to ‘in your face’. And that’s where he was, continually and fearlessly, while Claudius watched, brooding, sinister but unflinchingly recognising – and acting to eliminate - the threat behind the jibes.
Women do badly in the testosterone-soaked, locked-antler atmosphere of Elsinore: Gertrude’s beauty (Alice Hamilton) and Ophelia’s child-like frailty (Georgia Sawyer) seem to have little impact on the deadly Machiavellian game being played out under the soaring Gothic arches of Wadham Chapel. After she's used as bait to trap Hamlet, Polonius (punctilious and watchful George Duncan Jones) does at least extend an arm around his trembling daughter, her huge brown eyes gazing in dark terror, her fingers twisting the ringlets of her doll’s hair.
Grandeur and beauty apart, the echoing stone flags and the dancing patterns of dappled sunlight through stained glass, motes of dust rising as Hamlet wrestles a muscular Laertes (Will McCallum) in Ophelia’s lavender-strewn tomb have nothing of softness, and it is in Horatio (Matthew Ward), that most tenderness, friendship and loyalty is expressed.
The duck and dive exchanges reflected the front doors just slammed in Brown’s Britain, whether Castle or semi: the claustrophobia of family and teenage alienation. Indeed, Norris describes Hamlet as ‘children running amok.’ Two families, one intruder (Horatio) and the very domestic distractions that end up toppling a nation. This was Norris’ vision. I feel Hamlet is a lot more than that. But for this evening, in the warm summer’s rose-scented light – it was enough for now. Go see.