It does some things to the character. Hamlet’s reluctance to kill his uncle doesn’t feel like a crisis of conscience so much as there are easier targets. It’s not a good look for him, because whenever he lashes out it’s at someone who’s more vulnerable than him, usually a woman. And you do see these compelling flashes of vulnerability on his face, but he can’t accept it. Going after the vulnerability in others is how he avoids dealing with it. In the play, he casts himself as the poisoner, not the victim. You see that same struggle with Laertes, too, who is just so broken by his sister’s death, but curses his womanish tears (the way Hamlet curses himself for unpacking his heart with words like a whore) and keeps working himself up to anger. This is a tragedy of toxic masculinity, y’all.
(This performance of ‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I’ is the first one where I noticed the tension between ‘Yet I, / A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, / Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, / And can say nothing’ and ‘This is most brave, / That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, / Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, / Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words.’ One moment he hates himself for not having the words to express the injustice of his father’s death, the next words aren’t enough.)
It makes an interesting contrast to Claudius, whose performance is very soft. When his anger comes out, it’s in a sudden sharpness to his lines, and though he raises his voice, he never rages. You also see him comforting people who are vulnerable. Ophelia, Laertes – Laertes is absolutely broken by Ophelia’s madness and crumples on the stage, and Claudius kneels with him, picks him up, holds him and soothes him when he says ‘I must commune with your grief, or you deny me right.’ But because he uses people for his own ends, it’s always questionable. He’s as complicit in driving Ophelia to madness, and he’s about to drive Laertes to his death. (Also, he killed his brother. But you know, he probably had it coming.)
Just some really good choices. Ophelia’s performance is really good, everything that happens to her is so deeply unfair, and you can feel that betrayal. Her father betrays her by revealing her love affair with Hamlet and using her as bait, and then Hamlet betrays her by lashing out at her, hurting her, and killing her father. There’s some playful flirtation between Hamlet and Ophelia, at the beginning of the nunnery scene, and even though Ophelia has to stick to the script and return her letters and tokens to Hamlet … I get the sense that she expected Hamlet to understand. He should know her father’s like this, he should know she isn’t doing this by her own will. But he doesn’t. Or he refuses to. Their banter before the play is so bitter, and it feels like a real fight between exes.
(During her mad scene, the ‘flowers’ she gives out are bottles of pills, so have fun dissecting that!)
I also really like Gertrude’s performance, she’s someone who tries to put a smile on things and hope for the best, and you can tell that’s what she’s trying to do in the initial court scene with Hamlet. It's just not helping. (But what would help Hamlet?) As the play goes on and she can’t summon up a smile anymore, it’s one of the most heartbreaking things. They keep the Bad Quarto scene where Horatio brings news from Hamlet, and it’s not what she wants to hear. The growing distance between her and Claudius is so painful because she’s not ready to distrust and suspect the man she loves but she can’t just go to him, either. During the duel, she just … she loves her awful son. She’s trying her best to show that love within the ceremony of the duel, when she takes the drink and carouses to him. But she also knows it’s poison, and reveals it with her final lines, where she looks pointedly at Claudius and Claudius backs away.
There’s other stuff I want to talk about like the line remixes. I’m not a Hamlet purist, so when a production does something new with the script, I try to think of the effect it has on the play to present it this way. There are a ton of them, and this was supposed to be a quick paragraph! The opening scene is a remix with fragments of Claudius’s speeches on a tape recorder and on the TV, and Hamlet delivers ‘what a piece of work is a man’ as a soliloquy. It establishes his state of mind and his connection with the audience early (he’s really addressing the audience, not just speaking his thoughts out loud) though it does take something away from his later scenes with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The scene with the guards is just gone, and Horatio alone tells Hamlet about the ghost. (Horatio constantly looks concerned and that’s correct. She’s also a black woman doing a lot of emotional labor for a white man which is just how it be sometimes.) But I think the most interesting remix is the one I mentioned during the play-within-a-play, where Hamlet’s just not in the audience because he’s playing the poisoner. He really oversells it. God, Hamlet. The choices you make.
There was an extremely good chapel scene, so I had to share:
at the beginning of the play, there are grainy recordings of home movies with gertrude and young hamlet playing mixed in with the recordings of claudius’s speeches, pin that thought because it puts you in hamlet’s memories as he grieves his father but it notably doesn’t show his father, it shows that old relationship he had with his mother
when the ghost shows up, he is completely hooded and dressed in black, and this is a very dark set so he barely stands out from it — usually in the ghost scene you can see the ghost’s face or there’s a moment where he takes off his helmet to reveal it, and there isn’t one here! (there isn’t in hamlet in elsinore, either, and i do not trust that ghost) — pin that thought too
a third, seemingly unrelated thing is there’s some interesting double-casting with the player king and the gravedigger, and hamlet has a really warm relationship with the player king, maybe his warmest and most genuine in this whole play — the player seems like a mentor figure to him, and they remix hamlet’s advice to the actors so it’s something they’re sharing and discussing together — the player king and the player queen step into a paternal and maternal role for a moment, gently encouraging hamlet to think about the purpose of theater, something he loves
and of course he has that immediate rapport with the gravedigger, too — joking with the gravedigger is the last time you see hamlet really happy
so in the ending duel! the ghost is in the background being ominous as fuck, he’s always ominous as fuck, everybody dies and it sucks, and after horatio leaves behind the pile of bodies to tell hamlet’s story, the ghost comes to the stage and the bodies all rise and walk past him into the darkness
and then! the ghost faces hamlet! and he takes down his hood and you see it’s the gravedigger, who was also the player king — and those grainy home videos are playing on the back of the set again, and this time king hamlet is in them, and he’s played by that same actor
and in his gravedigger guise he leads hamlet down to the trap door that was the grave in the graveyard scene, while at the same time in the home movie, hamlet’s father closes the door while waving goodbye
it’s just lots of little choices coming together in the best most heartbreaking way
guys i love theater