Guys we did it. We made it to our final show of the trip. I have officially seen 25 shows in less than 30 days. Which is INSANE to think about and I am very emotionally overstimulated just by the vast range of shows that I have experienced.
Our final show that we saw on this trip was Hamlet: Hail to the Thief at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon. Ya’ll… it was crazy. In the best way possible. So, it was literally Hamlet… set to the music of Radiohead. Yeah. The rock band. And the crazy thing was… it worked. Really really well. I know this comes as a shock to you, but I did not know a single Radiohead song going into this show. I know. *Gasp* I had reread Hamlet prior to coming on this trip in order to prepare for our in class discussion, and was reminded just how much I loved the source material. Needless to say, I was so intrigued by how they were going to use music to tell this story that has been around for hundreds of years. Were they going to use Shakespearean language and iambic pentameter? Was it going to be the story of hamlet but in a jukebox musical format with Radiohead songs. I am happy to report it was neither of these things.
First, the show was one hour and forty minutes… no intermission. Which, if you know me, you know I LOVE a tight 90–100-minute show without an intermission. And Hamlet is notorious for being a long show. So, I was delighted to learn that this was going to be Hamlet told at the length of a Disney movie (The Lion King?!). As for structure, they used Shakespearean text, and then a lot of the longer scenes in the source material using Radiohead songs. They had 2 main actors that sang the songs, along with a live band. They were accompanied by the actors, who would sometimes sing, but mostly interpretive danced to the song as their character would. Being a musical theatre fan, I thought that this concept did an excellent job of propelling the journey of the characters forward while not deleting any information about the plot or given circumstances. In musical theatre, it is often said that characters should only sing whenever the emotion they are feeling is so great, the only way they can process these feelings is to sing about them. And while this was not Hamlet: The Musical, I felt like the songs were intentionally placed and did not feel disjointed or out of place.
However, the direction of the piece is what stood out to me the most. The actors used every single inch of this stage, and it was so effective in communicating the director’s perspective. The show was visually stunning, but I felt like this production was effective at asking the audience its main question: What does grief to do a human? How do different people work through grief? It honestly felt like a commentary on Hamlet’s mental health journey and how he processed the passing of his father. Not even his passing, his murder. The final image of the piece was breathtaking. At the beginning of the show, there are multiple suit jackets that are hanging on stage. They fly out right when the show starts, and we don’t see them again until the final scene, where they fly in again. It was at this moment where you realize that they are flying in at the exact places they were before. Only this time, they are hung above all the people who were killed in the final fight. This use of foreshadowing that we didn’t even know existed was so genius and I will be thinking about it for a very long time.
What an incredible way to end our series of shows. I truly think I will be processing and relieving a lot of these shows for years to come, and I am so grateful that I got to see Hamlet: Hail to the Thief.
-R
Theatre in London U of A 