Theater Review: A Transparent Hamlet from Dublin

Hamlet 
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Yaël Farber
Starring Ruth Negga
Gate Theater, Dublin
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn
February 29, 2020

I don’t know why I avoid Hamlet. Perhaps because it’s The Greatest Play. Perhaps because it is a testing vehicle for every young movie star to show they are “serious”, ranging from the plausible (Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale, Ethan Hawke) to the less so (Mel Gibson, Paul Giamatti). Perhaps because Hamlet is a young man who speaks like someone much older, and its hard to find an actor with the right mix of youthful abandon and gravitas. The older “big tragic” roles of Macbeth and Lear are easier to cast, as they seem to exemplify the challenges of middle and old age, respectively. And perhaps because I resist the play because it seems overly familiar, seemingly more a collection of famous phrases than a real play. The stellar production by the Gate Theater, Dublin, presented in Brooklyn the past few weeks, reminded me of both why I stay away and why it has greatness. Yes, the playwright’s insights are incredible. They play, however is too long and not structured very well. Since no lightning bolts have yet struck me as I say this, I will continue with my review.

This production followed recent trends and featured a women, the awesome Ruth Negga (b. 1982), in the title role. Her youthful appearance was perfect for the part, and she had ample macho swagger to pull off the sword-fighting and fratboy banter with Horatio. The tough part about this role is how to balance the brooding introspection on life, revenge, fate, etc. with the rather juvenile and overly masculine behavior. Most actors pick the former, erring on the side of melancholy, justifying older actors in the role (e.g. the 48 year old Olivier in the 1948 film). But this performance was more balanced. Some would find it trivializing, but I think Ms. Negga did a better job than most at portraying a tortured young man, not The Melancholy Dane of legend. This made the play more plausible. But, as it turns out, playing Hamlet as a real person has its risks. Without a Towering Presence onstage, we must attend to the whole play, and by that standard this play comes up short of Macbeth, Lear, and Othello. Why? Each of the other great Shakespeare tragic figures has at least one compelling figure to play off of…Lear has his evil daughters and the Fool, Macbeth has Lady Macbeth, and Othello has Iago. Who is the great character to play off Hamlet? None, really. All are types---Horatio the friend, Claudius the evil uncle, Laertes the hotblooded rival. Neither female character (Ophelia and Queen Gertrude) is a fully formed character. Ophelia is particularly odd—she goes mad and drowns herself without our really getting to know her as a person (unlike the tragic Desdemona). So here we are left with Hamlet, and Hamlet alone. This works just great in the first half, as Shakespeare takes us through his despair, rage, and calculations in a masterful psychological study using some of the greatest poetry and prose in the English language. But what about the last half? Hamlet goes to England (why?), there is much court plotting, some amusing gravediggers (there to set up “Alas, poor Yorick”), and the tragedy resolves with a rather gimmicky stabbing-with-poisoned-sword event and mistaken drinking of poison. These are all very conventional devices in Tudor theater, designed to please the audience much like car chases and explosions do now. But, really, nothing of import happens for the last 1.5 hours of a three-hour play. I never saw this structural flaw so clearly as in this splendidly transparent production. Hamlet has little of the vortex-of-fate that draws you to the tragic ending, as seen in Macbeth and Othello, and none of the mystic not-of-this world feel of King Lear. It’s about an hour too long, and the last half dissipates the outstanding opening two acts.

This production was a minimalistic, well directed show. A golden scepter dangles over the dark stage prior to the play’s start. There is cool, spooky use of plastic sheeting (above), from which ghosts sometimes emerge. Characters enter from the back of the audience, and during the play-within-a-play where Claudius is shown his own murderous act, the royal party is seated in the actual audience, watching the play onstage (interesting, but we are unable then to see the facial responses of the characters as they watch the play). Things are modernized (the guards carry machine guns), but not obtrusively. There was effective use of color, e.g. Gertrude’s murderous bed with red sheets and curtains, evoking Bergman’s red rooms for Cries and Whispers. The director made selected updatings of archaic words that were unobtrusive and contributed to clear understanding (but sadly dropped my favorite phrase “bare bodkin” in favor of “bare knife”). Also, an extraneous plot diversion (Fortinbras and his invasion) was cut altogether, so the play ends not with Fortinbras marching on the stage to save Denmark (always a weird anticlimactic ending after all the death and carnage), but instead with Hamlet dying onstage with the excellent last words “the rest is silence” as we are given his experience of dying. So, I give the director credit for trying to clarify and streamline, while maintaining an epic three hour length that Shakespeare intended. However, the stripping away of musty layers revealed a hemi-play, not a full one. And no matter how good the hemi-play, that is how I will perceive Hamlet from now on. And perhaps that is why I have subconsciously resisted it in the past.