Before I begin my critique of hail to the thief I feel like it is important to lay out some of my biases that may have affected my feelings towards the production. I am in no way a fan of interpretive dance. I recognize the skill it takes and believe it is a perfectly valid piece of art, but it is something that I have a very hard time understanding and do not particularly enjoy. This is particularly relevant for this show because for a relatively short run time a decent chunk of it was made up of interpretive dance.
My biggest problem with the play was that it felt like Hamlet for people who already knew the story of Hamlet. It hit all the big plot points of the story, but between the cut out sections and the portions of the story told only through dance, the play alone did not give strong reasons to feel attached to or care about the characters. Knowing the story and knowing the characters going into production, I was able to piece together what the dance was trying to show, but I feel like without that previous knowledge I might have trouble following the plot fully, but more than that I would have trouble connecting to the plot as the characters had not been fully explored. While I do not believe that to tell the story of Hamlet each line needs to be read word for word, I feel like there is a happy medium of a 2 to 2 ½ hour hamlet that fully gives the story without dragging too long or cutting too much. To me it felt like the spark notes of hamlet. You get all the big plot points and famous lines and speeches, but so much outside of that is lost. I get frustrated on occasion with the inaccessibility of theatre and I feel like this show was a strong example of it.
I also felt like the inclusion of the radio head music did not make the story necessarily any more impactful. That may have partially been because with my proximity I could not very well hear the lyrics, but there seemed to be a sharp distinction between the chunks of dialogue that progressed the plot, and then the chunks of music and dance that were more just performance. The performances confused me about the plot and character dynamics more than they explained things. There would often be characters behaving aggressively towards each other or even romantically towards each other in ways that did not seem to be reflected or at least not explained in the plot. This may be part of me having trouble with understanding interpretive dance but I feel like much of it did not read as plot relevant and was just put in to create a striking visual, which I feel like by itself is fine but when trying to fit a sometimes 4 hour long story into a 1 hour 40 minute show you do not really have time to do things that don’t progress the plot.
While there were parts of the story I did not like, the visuals on the show were very good. I did not like the decision to put every character in black because I feel like it takes away the impact of Hamlet staying in somewhat mourning attire, but outside of the story they created a very striking image and I was impressed with the variety of costumes and silhouettes that were used despite all the characters wearing primarily black. The projection was also some of the most impressive I have seen, the ghost of Hamlet’s father was actually scary which I feel is very hard to do in a live show. Using the haze as part of the projection screen and warping his face, with it contorting in and out and sometimes just being a large eye, made me truly unsettled when the ghost appeared.
Overall while it was not my favorite show, it did have some very interesting elements and has definitely raised my interest in how projections can be used more effectively in the theatre.
(P.S. I forgot to take a photo of the stage before the show, so attached is a picture of a cool looking wallet I saw in the giftshop and a fun painting I saw earlier in the day)
Theatre in London U of A 