SYDNEY FESTIVAL: HAMLET
HAMLET Sydney Theatre January 8-16, 2.5 hours, no interval. Sydney Festival photographer: Jamie Williams.
Is Thomas Ostermeier’s Hamlet really Shakespeare? His answer – in answering to the question put by a Sydney journalist – is, “I am not sure I know what real Shakespeare is. Do you?” Good question, don’t you think?
It’s my guess that when Hamlet was first staged in the early 1600s there would have been as many sharp intakes of breath, as much harrumphing and similar expressions of bewilderment, as well as shivers of pure delight, as there were at the Sydney Festival opening night performance (Jan 9). At a time when holding up a mirror to the powerful was even more instantly dangerous than it is today, Hamlet would have forced the playwright’s royal and aristocratic fans to consider some very unsavoury pictures of their behaviour, private and public. For that reason Shakespeare set his play in the “corrupt” court of Denmark, but another reason could well have been that the truth of the late Elizabethan court in which he precariously flourished was far stranger than any fiction he could concoct.
For a nice middle class audience in the second decade of the 21st century Hamlet does all of the above – uncomfortably – but also, it messes with the Bard. And few seem able to come at that: ask Barrie Kosky.
Ostermeier, director of Berlin's fabled Schaubühne, has deconstructed, reconstructed and finally turned Hamlet into an absurdly playful – and therefore malevolent and poignant – vision of a life and mind upended by tragedy and lost love. And as the mind is already unhinged by over-privilege and hubris, it takes very little to tip the balance and cause the prince to spend two and a half non-stop hours planning, attempting and exacting his revenge.
Lars Eidinger leads a cast of just six actors from within a fat suit that he climbs into in full view of the audience (distanciation anyone?). With straggly ratty hair, a paunch and pouting, sly-humoured demeanour, he morphs into the least attractive prince imaginable – until you remember how weirdly attractive Bob Ellis is to some women. Eidinger’s prince is a podgy, spoilt, selfish little shit who occasionally employs Tourette's Syndrome in place of debating skills, yet nevertheless has that peculiar and irresistible charm of arrested development that allows rock stars to get away with murder, more or less. It would make him a natural hanging out buddy with Pamela Rabe’s Richard III (in Benedict Andrews’ War of the Roses Sydney Festival 2009).
Ostermeier’s greater achievement, however, is probably in the sexual politics of the piece. He has cast one actress, the tremendous Judith Rosmair, as both Ophelia and Hamlet’s mama, Queen Gertrude. It makes for a tight focus on the women in his life, with disturbing and very obvious implications. His cruelty to Ophelia is more logical because – like so many men – he blames his mother for all his own failings and easily projects her alleged sins onto his young beloved. And with Gertrude played as a breathy-voiced nitespot songstress who’s determined to make yet another strategic marriage alliance after the “mysterious” death of her husband, Hamlet’s rage at his uncle for so speedily replacing the dead king takes on layers of socially unacceptable meaning usually only hinted at.
This Hamlet is a very physical, visceral experience; it takes the concept of “earth to earth” literally and the prince and his family and friends plod and slide through – and occasionally even eat – the tonnes of luscious loam that fill the boxed stage and which would surely make Peter Cundall’s heart sing. In contrast a shimmering curtain of fine gold chain – not unlike chainmail – hangs from on high and is used as a projection screen for Hamlet’s paparazzo-style obsessive home videos and also to mark the passing of time and place. It’s spectacular and deceptively simple, with a garden hose for rain and a long trestle table where palace feasting is catered with cheap take-away containers and cans and cartons of drink. This is a royal family whose lives are on display Big Brother style, and with about as much class. Think At Home with the Gotti’s and you’ve got it.
Ostermeier and his cast (also Urs Jucker, Claudius and Ghost, Robert Beyer, Polonius, Osric, Sebastian Schwarz Horatio, Guildenstern, Stefan Stern Laertes, Rosencrantz) have achieved a re-invention of the play that succeeds in so many thrilling ways and, in my opinion, is way out and beyond his Adelaide Festival visit with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; a reading that seemed to substitute bird poo for ideas.
Marius von Mayenburg (Fireface) translated the play into German but as it is totally transformed, this counts for little for an English speaking audience – aside from the need to concentrate rather more than might be expected on the eccentric but serviceable surtitles. Altogether this Hamlet is provocative, beautiful, ugly, thoughtful, astute, hideously funny, terribly sad and the Festival opener of an artistic director’s dreams. Lindy Hume can now wake up and get on with the rest of the party.
