‘Hamlet’ – Belvoir

HAMLET – BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
DIRECTED BY SIMON STONE
BELVOIR – UPSTAIRS THEATRE
16 OCTOBER – 17 NOVEMBER 2013 (TOBY SCHMITZ AS HAMLET)
19 NOVEMBER – 1 DECEMBER 2013 (EWEN LESLIE AS HAMLET)

INTERVAL CHAT

Sybil: Oh my god.
Lea: So good.
Sybil: I’ve never seen Hamlet like this. It’s like a modern poetry play.
Lea: And I’m hearing lines in a way I’ve never heard them before too, finding new nuances.
Sybil: Direction and minimisation.
Lea: Simple.
Sybil: And having Hamlet there on stage, as a spectator and eavesdropper on the whole thing.
Lea: Which makes sense, because he is always one step ahead of everyone else, it’s much better that he sees all of the conniving going on.
Sybil: Or imagines it. Is it all going on in his own head?
Lea: That’s what’s really clear about Toby Schmitz’s performance, Hamlet’s own self doubt is so much clearer than I have ever seen it in any other production. And his father, his ghost always being there, is an amazing presence.
Sybil: A constant reminder in his mind.
Lea: I loved the music – having the pianist on the stage and the amazing counter-tenor.
Sybil: It was simple, astounding.
Lea: And it’s all about the awful, terrible circumstances of the actual plot. How about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as just the one person; and the players are just Hamlet.
Sybil: I loved it.
Lea: Wasn’t he great? I just loved the … what do you call them?
Sybil: Puppets
Lea: Puppets?
Sybil: Mannequins.
Lea: Is there another word for them?
Sybil: Probably.
Lea: Well the other word for them then! Look it up! [ED: I think you’ll find that the word you’re looking for is marionettes]
Sybil: Yeah they were great.
Lea: They were sensational. And it was much more poignant – rather than Hamlet directing the play, he just fucking did it!
Sybil: Yes! And I loved how they cut SO much.
Lea: So much was cut out! But I didn’t care!
Sybil: It was so clean. Like they kept the stuff that’s really sharp and poignant and anguished and it’s almost like it clears a way through.
Lea: Cut the superfluous stuff that confuses the action. You really see Gertrude’s torment, you really see Claudius in his confession.
Sybil: I LOVED Polonius. Oh. My. God. He’s so funny! Loveable.
Lea: He was just bringing it.
Sybil: The character is just beautifully done. So what about Ophelia?
Lea: Her first big emotional scene – I didn’t feel it. But she played that fine line beautifully – she wasn’t a bitch. She was just doing what she thought she should do for her dad. And I’ve always thought that had been really difficult to achieve with other Ophelias I’ve seen.
Sybil: A lot of them make it that she’s gone mad because he’s rejected her. But not in this interpretation…
Lea: I liked that. Overall I’m loving Toby’s performance, but there were a couple of times where he was trying to work so much against the meter and the normal intonation of the lines that I lost the meaning a little… just a few times.
Sybil: Oh! I LOVED ‘to be or not to be’ and I LOVED ‘what a piece of work is man’. OH! I loved them. I thought his monologues were amazing. And you know, I’ve seen other productions where the monologues are great but they haven’t really fitted? So you think, ok, the actor has worked just worked on those monologues.
Lea: “Here is a scene, but here is THE MONOLOGUE”.
Sybil: Yep exactly. But everything has just been so streamlined.
Lea: And seamless in the sense of …
Sybil: … and integrated and authentic. This was like a chamber choir.
Lea: A chamber orchestra version of a full orchestral piece.
Sybil: And I love it. They’re going to have to really work hard to fuck it up in the second half for me not to give it a five!
Lea: I know, I know.
Sybil: For me this is the Shakespeare that every other Shakespeare has to live up to.
Lea: Stop it girlfriend!
Sybil: I am LOVING this.
Lea: It’s so wonderful. I’m so glad we’re here.

POST SHOW CHAT

Sybil: That is possibly the most powerful piece of theatre I’ve seen. I was trying to think of ‘in how long’ but it might just be full stop.
Lea: That was the most extraordinary end.
Sybil: It was the most extraordinary interpretation of this work. It was like it was a different piece of theatre and he was a different character and the end was all about his madness and not about – I mean it was tragic.
Lea: I adored that everyone who was killed remained onstage – starting off with the ghost, his father, who was there the whole time, and then Polonius, and Ophelia, and then Rosencrantz/Guildenstern.
Sybil: Gertrude and Claudius were onstage, all bloody, before they were actually dead at the end of the play.
Lea: Oh that was amazing.
Sybil: Because he was insane! It was so wonderful.
Lea: It was extraordinary to have a fight scene without a fight scene. And the deaths without the poison.
Sybil: Here’s my question though: If you didn’t know the play, would that have been confusing?
Lea: I would hazard a guess, yes, absolutely.
Sybil: Ok. Because I was actually thinking during that section – I know what’s going on, and it’s AMAZING, but would I be confused? And at first, I was thinking, yes, but by the end I don’t think I would be, because actually this is all about his madness. So in the context of that interpretation, it completely made sense and you wouldn’t have to know what happened in the original work. I don’t think.
Lea: But there was still “method in his madness”.
Sybil: I can’t recall ever seeing a performance as powerful as Toby’s. I’m putting it out there. Not a single performance. He was on stage for the entire first act. And in the second act when it was white – so in my head I was going – okay so the blackness was his grief and he’s seeing everything in the context of his grief and then the second half, when it was all white and he wasn’t on stage the whole time, and there was a whole bunch of stuff that happened when he wasn’t on stage – so I thought – okay this is reality. And then he’s completely insane and so it’s not reality at all – it totally flipped what I had thought… I can’t express it. I was almost in tears at the end.
Lea: I totally agree.
Sybil: And not tears of sadness, tears of… I was so moved. It was so powerful. And I feel so privileged to have seen it.
Lea: Yes. The complete abandon on stage for all of them in that end sequence – the stillness in everyone aside from Toby, and the commitment to what that scene was…
Sybil: Toby left everything on that stage.
Lea: Jesus.
Sybil: He left everything. It looked like there was nothing left.
Lea: It was incredible. Incredible.
Sybil: Direction, Simon Stone – fucking amazing.
Lea: Yes, it was actually a perfect edit. I didn’t grieve for any part of it. There was no part I wished was still in there. I was like, “Yeah, go on, you cut that”.
Sybil: Perfect.
Lea: And to end with that incredible still, standing death. And then to add in that gorgeous counter-tenor, with the whole cast, singing that song “Remember me. Remember me. Remember me”. Haunting.
Sybil: I loved Ophelia in the second half.
Lea: I didn’t as much. I just felt I lost some truth in her madness.
Sybil: Really? You see I loved the fact that her madness was totally triggered by the death of her father.
Lea: Yes, that was gorgeous. She did play that beautifully – so devoted to her dad.
Sybil: There was a beautiful relationship and then when he died she just lost the plot. I loved her.
Lea: And Robin Nevin.
Sybil: Oh my god, she was just incredible.
Lea: Amazing. It was a beautiful idea that she just couldn’t deal with what her life had become, so she just became drunker and drunker and drunker. And it was a beautiful interpretation that made great sense of her character.
Sybil: And it was so gentle. It wasn’t broad.
Lea: It was beautifully played.
Sybil: And I loved that little moment when Ophelia took the wine glass from her. It was like “No, no, no, I’m taking this”.
Lea: I’m now the most important person to your son.
Sybil: Well, I’m taking your crutch away from you. I’m taking it because I need it. It was just so beautiful. Like, I’m going to struggle to give this five because I want to give it seven.
Lea: I will definitely give it a five.
Sybil: I also loved that they played down Gertrude’s involvement in the murder? And I loved that they played down the whole Oedipal feel – they just cut out a lot of that stuff that has been done and is confusing. It’s about Hamlet and his madness from grief.
Lea: And that was a standing ‘O’ from us. We haven’t done that for anything else.
Sybil: No. Did we not stand for Cut Snake? I think we might have.
Lea: Well I feel like it’s the first time we’ve done that in a long time.
Sybil: It’s been a while since we saw Cut Snake to be fair. They’re so different so it’s really hard to compare… but I’m going to do it anyway! Cut Snake was fabulous for all the things it was, and for many of the things that it wasn’t. But this was a canon. It’s part of the… I mean, if it’s not THE play to end all plays, it’s one of them.
Lea: In the top five!
Sybil: And this was a stellar production. I think every other Hamlet we see will have to measure up to this. And Toby’s Hamlet – I can’t wait for someone to try to better it because I don’t think that they can.
Lea: Absolutely.
Sybil: But I hope I’m there if they do! I expected the play to be good, but I didn’t expect this.
Lea: How beautiful, how gorgeous.
Sybil: How amazing. How lucky are we that we got tickets before Toby leaves for filming in South Africa.
Lea: I know.
Sybil: I can’t just give five though.
Lea: But there is nothing above five.
Sybil: Well then I need a star.
Lea: Maybe it needs five glasses of wine and a gin and tonic?
Sybil: I think that works for me!
Lea: Great! I’ll design one. I think there’s a really big lesson to be learned from this production, Shakespeare is amazing and there are huge themes, but it doesn’t actually have to be four and a half hours long. You can do it in two hours including an interval.
Sybil: Take note Benedict Andrews.
Lea: “CC: Benedict Andrews” (many giggles). Lesson learned. Booya! Classics don’t have to be done the way they’re always done.

IN SUMMARY

Sybil: This production has stayed with me – like great theatre should, I guess. I’m still finding themes and depths that I didn’t consider on first viewing. Who would I recommend this to? Are you human? Then go, because this is theatre at its finest.
Lea: A revelation. Hamlet stripped and stitched back together into this pure, streamlined work – allowing the crazy depths of Hamlet’s mind to amaze us all. Bravo!
Question: Do you have a favourite Hamlet (stage or film)?

INTERVAL AND POST SHOW DRINKS: Belvoir Foyer, to soak up the ambience of the cast having a post show drink of their own.
OUR HANGOVER STATUS: We could’ve kicked on, but we prudently let the play itself leave us with a blissed-out buzz.
MORE INFO: belvoir.com.au/productions/hamlet/