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Hamlet poster, Southwark Playhouse, Jan 2023
This slimmed-down manufacturing of Hamlet by Lazarus Theatre Company on the Southwark Playhouse clocks in at simply 95 minutes. It focuses totally on the youthful characters – Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The story is framed as a form of remedy session, there’s a circle of chairs, and a voice over a tannoy proclaims it’s a ‘secure area’. The tannoy is a tool used for the ‘adults’ speaking all through the play – on the few events they function.
I’m positively not a Shakespeare purist, I like the concept of trimmed-down Shakespeare. There are chunks of his performs that had been applicable for the time they had been written that may be simply minimize for contemporary audiences with out affect on the story.
Too many cuts
But an excessive amount of has been eliminated on this manufacturing. If you are not acquainted with the story, I’m unsure you’d get a lot from it.
It’s a play I’ve seen loads of instances (and studied), so I might simply fill within the gaps. What was misplaced for me was the context, the layers and the nuance.
If you by no means see Hamlet (Michael Hawkey) interacting with Claudius and Gertrude or see the adults plotting and manipulating, you lose half of what’s driving him and what he’s up in opposition to. You miss the politics of household and succession.
Making sense of the story
Similarly, when you do not see Laertes (Sam Morris) and Ophelia (Lexine Lee) with their father, Polonius, when Hamlet murders him, it’s extra obscure Ophelia’s grief/insanity and Laertes’s anger. In truth, when you do not ever see Polonius, it makes point out of his homicide a bit ‘so-what’.
There is a scarcity of emotional vary in these one-sided relationships. What you might be left with is a Hamlet who’s offended and comes off as boastful.
‘To be or to not be’ is delivered like a rapidly rehearsed speech to the remedy group quite than because the ideas of somebody conflicted with grief, worry and anger.
Inventive
There had been parts of the manufacturing which had been creative and effectively completed. I like the concept of the younger characters having a secure area to talk. And the chorus-style supply of the ghost’s voice had an otherworldly really feel – virtually extraterrestrial.
The slo-mo combat between Laertes and Hamlet was additionally efficient, a form of sluggish dance to dying. (Although with out the context of the poisoned blade.)
However, Hamlet is a play that’s often transferring and tragic, and this manufacturing did not really feel both. I’m giving it ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Hamlet, Southwark Playhouse
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Ricky Dukes
Running time 95 minutes with out an interval.
Booking till 4 February; for extra info and to purchase tickets, head to Southwark Playhouse’s web site
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