Review - Hamlet, Schaubune Berlin @ Barbican

There is so much to say about this production. I had high hopes, having read at length about Thomas Ostermeier's work, and his penchant for tearing apart then sewing back together canonical texts. This afternoon was in no way a disappointment. His vision of the Danish castle as a gauche, messy, single room was pitch perfect; the set was at once beautiful and ugly, with gold chain curtains and flashy lights, actors in tuxedos juxtaposed against dirt covering the first quarter of the stage, and an increasing amount of mess (literally garbage!) littering the stage as the play went on. The actors, too, began beautiful and we saw them fall apart. Images of consumption were highlighted quite forcibly, with not only the actors being consumed (by guilt, by revenge, etc) but many scenes of actual consumption of water, beer, milk, liquid that looks like blood. The very first introduction to Horatio was with him sitting at the table, eating voraciously, with food all over his face. This symbolic representation of the characters' devolution was quite stunning.

The performances were remarkable: Hamlet (Lars Eidinger) was not the beautiful, brooding Danish prince we have come to expect, but rather a spoiled, overweight, moody brat, forcing his video camera into the faces of his family (and at times even the audience). Gertrude and Ophelia were played by the completely fabulous Judith Rosmair, who played the two women differently and yet the same, characterizing the echoes of these two women so central to Hamlet's life in one another. Her physical work both in the transitions from Gertrude to Ophelia and back, and more specifically in Ophelia's madness was completely transfixing; I couldn't stop watching her remarkable and specific movements and vocalizations. The other four (that's right, only 4) actors were fabulous as well, playing Laertes/Rosencrantz in the same actor and Horatio/Guildenstern as one, along with an actor for Polonius and one for Claudius.

What I found most fabulous was the self-awareness of the production, finding moments to highlight Hamlet's jester-like qualities, coming out to the audience, turning the play into a black comedy. And it did not feel in any way incorrect...it was all those things that flash through your mind reading the play, brought brilliantly to light.

Fabulous. I must try to visit Schaubune when I go to Berlin...and hopefully manage to catch their Measure for Measure in Paris. More!! I want more!!!!!

HamletMachine - Heiner Mueller

I rather enjoyed the premise of this play, beginning with the character Hamlet and unmasking the actor to be a sort of everyman, encountering the world. The message seemed to be that our "modern myths" of the theatre have not prepared us sufficiently for the brutal reality of the world. Even the greatest tragedy, Hamlet, did not prepare us for the machine of mass culture, horrific violence, and disconnection of humanity.

The structure was interesting; it may have been the translation, but I wasn't always sure whether what I was reading was a stage direction or text for a character. This makes for some great variety in choices for producing the play, which I do find intriguing. What also really stood out was the poetry in the language, even translated to English from its original German this had a beautiful yet violent rhythm in the text.

Somehow, decade over decade, the German theatre artists continue to fascinate me.

Snow at home

I have seen, thanks to the glorious technology of facetime, that there is already snow at home in Winnipeg. Albeit the icy, only-on-the-banisters kind, but snow nonetheless. Things are getting colder here, and some trees are turning, but many are still rather green and fully leaved. Right now it is great, although at some point the curiosity of ever-green might wear off. I'm told it gets "brown" here, however having lived through Winnipeg springs for the last 29 years, seriously doubt it can be quite as brown as my least favourite season.

Spent a lot of time in the RADA library, picked up some reading, mainly for my own purposes; Absolutely! (perhaps) by Luigi Pirandello, Three Late Medieval Morality Plays, Sophocles' Antigone, fat pig by Neil LaBute, and Palace of the End by Judith Thompson. Also a book on the context of Medieval Theatre for research on Ludus Danielis, the play I will be co-directing for the King's College MA students with two fellow RADA MA's. I want to do a bit of dramaturgical work for this specifically, because my previous experience with the Medieval plays is limited to discussions in Theatre History back at UW.

On to class; today we were discussing Aristotle and Plato's ideas about the theatre, followed by an in-depth look at the similarity and difference between The Oresteia and Hamlet in terms of structure, function of the characters, and presentation of argument. I found it quite interesting to re-read Aristotle and Plato in this context, with only excerpts (and from poor translations...) to guide us. I felt compelled to argue in defense of Plato, who was presented separated from his view of the human condition (cave image) and from his later Phaedrus. For me, Plato's false idols are still a problem, however not an indication that all art is bad.

We did an exercise creating an image of the plots of Hamlet and an Aristotelian tragedy. This proved really difficult, partially because I felt our group lacked significant focus. I am not entirely happy with the result we produced on this, and am going to spend some time on my own creating an image system to do this task. I am hoping this clarifies my thoughts, particularly those about the point of climax in Hamlet...as stated in an earlier blog, I feel that the deaths are not necessarily the climax. This is an argument I want to play out some more