Heading into the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet Hail to the Theif I was struggling with my own expectations for this show. I was quite disappointed in the Romeo and Juliet we saw at The Globe. I had expected to see that show and go “Oh my god THIS is what Shakespeare is supposed to be!” and that just wasn’t the case. So now that we were in Stratford at the Royal Shakespeare Company seeing Hamlet that is conceptualized using the music of Radiohead I was unsure of what my expectations should be. I am ecstatic to say this is exactly what I wanted out of Shakespeare in England.
First, we must discuss the fact that we saw an HOUR AND FORTY MINUTE PRODUCTION OF HAMLET. To me, that deserves it’s own standing ovation. Hamlet it known to be a Shakespeare that is long, drawn out, and deeply gut wrenching. This production let go of all previously conceived notions of the play. At some points it felt like the original script was just used as source material and not the actual script for this production. They took the things that define Hamlet, “to be or not to be”, “the lady dost protest too much”, beautiful Ophelia, etc and let go of all of the fluff. In place of the fluff they wove in the music of Radiohead and the incredible use of movement and dance to fill in the gaps of the script that they had cut up.
The music itself felt like it’s own character. The band lined the back of the stage in their own sound booths that the audience could see into. The two singers had their own doorways that opened in the upper platform of the back wall that they would appear and disappear through. The music almost played the part of the Greek Chorus, while the characters used the interlude to show us what happened in between scenes or set up the upcoming scene without any text at all. The style of movement became it’s own language that was so clear we didn’t need a translator to understand what they were telling us.
The movement was somewhere between contemporary dance and true performance art. It almost felt like it’s own unique art style, as if this style of movement was created solely for storytelling with Radiohead. I was really impressed by how natural and organic this movement felt, not only in the story, but also in the body of the actors. Often times when you witness productions that play with interpretive dance or conceptualized movement it can feel awkward in the body of the actors, that was quite the opposite here. It seemed as if these actors had always told stories this way.
Watching this movement made me this about my Viewpoints class from my first semester. We used several different exercises to find our own bodies organic movements and developed not only our own physical language, but a language between the 12 of us that were in the class. We rehearsed moving as a unit using what is called soft focus, which is an awareness of yourself and the other bodies in the space. When the entire company achieves soft focus at the same time it feels like they become one unit of movement. This feeling was ever present in this production.
The show flowed effortlessly, never giving us too little or too much time to process what we were seeing. Heading into the next semester of Directing Studio I will be working with Shakespeare and this production has made me excited to find ways to make whichever play I work on feel renewed and mastered in the way that this production was able to.
Theatre in London U of A 