Hamlet & Me (Part XII)

Gertrude & Hamlet
Laura Perrotta, Laura Welsh Berg
Great Lake Theater, 2017
Photo: Roger Mastroianni

"What then? What rests?"
- Hamlet, III.iii

To conclude, I have seen more live stage productions of Hamlet than any other play by Shakespeare, except for perhaps As You Like It, which is a shame because, as G.B. Shaw said, “It is not as I like it.” But the latter is more commonly produced than the former at a rate of at least ten-to-one.

There are, of course, the recent stage productions of Hamlet adapted for television and much beloved by my contemporaries, those starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Paapa Essiedu, Andrew Scott or David Tennant. Oddly enough, I have never made the time to watch any of those. The fact is, I love to hear Shakespeare in a theater, live or filmed, but have little patience for him on the small screen.

I can think of three downright terrible live productions of Hamlet. I haven’t made mention of any of them in this series of posts, but I will say the principal sin of each of these productions was a lack of inspiration. Hamlet is such a weird play, the man himself such an odd character, you can’t just decide to “do” Hamlet. When you aim at a king, etc.

A couple years ago I recounted my experience thrilling to Clayton Jevne’s One-Man Hamlet at the Minnesota Fringe (you may watch the entire show online) and I am still smarting that I did not make time to see the Israeli Cameri Theatre troupe perform the play entirely in Hebrew when they visited Cleveland in 2008. I have yet to see Hamlet performed in another language, but I know the text so well that I think doing so would be a fascinating thing to do. I will not pass on another such opportunity.

If I were to elevate one Hamlet that I have enjoyed above all others, that would be Laura Welsh Berg at Great Lakes Theater in 2017. This was not a gender-concealed retelling, like the Asta Nielsen film or my Beck Center production, Berg was playing Hamlet as a man, in Elizabethan dress and on a stage design to evoke the Globe. It was the most “traditional” production of Hamlet I’d ever seen, and it was a revelation.

While I do not agree with what Edward P. Vining characterized as feminine “weaknesses” in the Dane’s psychology, I have found that Hamlet’s transparent misogyny becomes something quite else when communicated by a woman. Disappointment instead of derision. Empathy instead of anger. Berg powerfully embodied all of the grief and rage and condescension Hamlet holds for his father, his uncle, Polonius, while also making the “nunnery” and “closet” scenes, in which he traumatizes first his lover and then his mother, truly affecting for all parties.

Recently, I read the script for the new play The Motive and the Cue by Jack Thorne. Inspired by the books Letters From an Actor by William Redfield and John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in "Hamlet" by Richard Sterne. It is an imagined dramatization of the rehearsal process for that 1964 Broadway production.

I find that this script is most successful at describing to an audience just what it is a director does – and what they should not do – as the legendary though cash-poor Gielgud endeavors to shape the performance of the besotted but powerful Burton in a role that he, Gielgud, knows all too well, or perhaps much too well, while Burton struggles to make the role his, Burton’s, own.

It's a play I'd like to attend. Better still, I'd like to play Gielgud. I think I could. And anyway, no one ever asked me to play Hamlet.