Director Dan Jemmett looked back on his youth in the 1970s and decided to stage Hamletin episodes as if for a TV series then. So he’s set Shakespeare’s Elsinore mainly in a clubhouse of the Danish Chateau-of-State. Most of the action takes place in the bar, but there are trips across to a juke box, a front area suitable for dancing, private talks, and even staging theater. (A nook for aged liquor storage down center serves to store bodies as well.) Sports trophies and a pair of swords fill a back shelf above all but the closed-off men’s john on one side, women’s stalls on the other. The play begins out front with two cops chasing with guns and their flashlights what turns out to be a Ghost.
Now begins, more or less, the show of moral rot and how Hamlet must be involved in removing it. Dark-haired Denis Podalydes looks middle-aged as the anguished hero, who delivers the “to be or not to be" soliloquy in the bathroom mirror as he (symbolically?) washes his hands. In her sheer purple cocktail dress with plunging neckline, blonde Gertrude (Clotilde De Bayser) appears too young to be his mom. Her continual boozing may make her, though, a fitting amour for blustery drinker Claudius (Herve Pierre), who spends most of his time wrapping himself around her. He actually looks more like Hamlet and is closer to his age than the often-behind-the-bar Ghost (slim, fair Eric Rufl who also -- in one inspired bit of casting -- acts the Player King).
Too bad Gilles David’s wonderfully preachy and woefully misjudging Polonius strays from the bar once too often, even though by being killed he may have stopped Hamlet -- in this version -- as he’s about to rape his mom.
Jennifer Decker’s Ophelia seems as if she comes in from a tennis match to meet Hamlet, rather than be “loosed” to him on her dad’s orders. Poor girl has to drown herself in the ladies‘ loo!
Jerome Pouly’s Laertes is recognizable mainly by the lines he says, while Horatio is played as stalwart and sensible by Alain Lenglet. Though Elliot Jenicot figures prominently in Claudius‘ plot as Rosencrantz, Guildenstern has been reduced to a Scottish puppy attached to his arm. (Did the director get this idea from The Beaver stuck to Mel Gibson in the movie of that name?)
Much credit goes to Laurent Natrella and Benjamin Lavernhe for filling five supporting roles each and filling them well. It’s the quality of the acting that makes this Hamlet worth seeing. I understand the interpretation is one of the troupe’s attempts to revitalize classics and attract new audiences. As the obviously well-educated man sitting next to me remarked: “If this is what it takes to draw young people to great theater, God help us.”
