You can measure a life in productions of Hamlet, I think. And you should. What’s better than watching a brooding teenager and professional procrastinator match your teen angst during high school, a lovelorn Ophelia match your mid-twenties heartbreak, or a murderous Uncle reflect your shame back at you? What’s better than sitting down to see these characters play out their stories again and again, feeling as if you know them, and that they know you.
But of course that’s the rub. There’s a price for this deep familiarity, one powerfully capitalised on by this sterling production from Melbourne Shakespeare Company (MSC). That tinge of recognition ultimately acknowledges our similarity. Hamlet’s procrastination is not a complete mystery to us, really.
Ophelia’s death, Gertrude’s betrayal, even Claudius’s bloodthirsty ambition are tragic because they are understandable. We are facing characters that we know because in some essential way they are us. What we are forced to reckon with is the fact that we are capable of doing exactly what they do, albeit not in a royal court in Denmark.
What MSC has achieved with this production is nothing short of miraculous. Iain Sinclair’s minimalistic vision for the infamous tragedy brings out this essential familiarity in a way that feels utterly fresh, and deeply affecting. Featuring a stellar cast, this is a show worthy of a sold-out season and any superlative you can think of.
We begin in near-complete darkness sitting around a single candle in the middle of the stage as if gathered for a church service in the bowels of fortyfivedownstairs. Our Hamlet (Jacob Collins-Levy) enters before Horatio (Darcy Kent) whips out an Iphone with its torch on to replace the candle.
They smile at each other as if they’re mates poking fun at those Shakespearean productions always trying to ‘modernise’ the bard, or just sharing a moment of intimacy before the show’s tragedy begins.
In this way Sinclair introduces us to the way he understands this tome of revenge, tragedy and grief – namely, through its relationships. It makes sense that he would settle on a phrase like ‘passionate communion’ in his Director’s Vision.
At all points in this 170-minute staging, he showcases each relationship on stage with a near-religious significance. Ophelia (the enigmatic Aisha Aidara) and Laertes (a playfully boyish Laurence Boxhall) wrestle and bicker over a bag packed for France (full of the essentials: a badminton racket, a set of condoms) like all siblings must.
Polonius (a stand-out Darren Gilshenan) sends his son off with the usual formalities before scuttering back on stage for a deep embrace. Horatio and Hamlet wander through a graveyard sharing childhood anecdotes like inside jokes.
Act One is full of moments that showcase the play’ relationships in ways that enfold us in a warmth and intimacy that feels almost too private to witness. To front load the show with these moments only makes the tragedy that comes in Act Two all the more affecting.
Gertrude (Natasha Herbert) walks in wet following Ophelia’s death as if she launched into the water to try and save her. It’s a deeply affecting acknowledgement of a connection few productions highlight that lands, thanks to Herbert’s tearful performance, with a palpable mournfulness like all the subtle choices peppered throughout this production.
Minimalism is truly back in vogue off the back of the success of directors like Jamie Lloyd. But while Sinclair’s minimalism shares Lloyd’s interest in making us pay greater attention to writing and acting, his approach feels warmer and more casual.
Letting his actors, especially Hamlet, address the audience often, makes many early comedic beats feel playful and conversational. When things turn tragic, this endearing intimacy sticks like a lump in the throat. Truly, I have never felt such palpable grief in any audience during a production of Hamlet.
It is aided by an approach to staging the play’s many deaths that I won’t spoil, but that thrums with a heart-wrenching hauntedness. Meanwhile, Natalia Velasco Moreno’s subtle and dynamic lighting design – from deep yellow sidelights to shadowy candles and clinically white iPhone torch lights – only heightens this tragic ghostliness.
I was wary of Collins-Levy’s Hamlet initially. Much of those classic early monologues failed to land emotionally and his physicality seemed nearly wooden. But his performance grows in stature as he limbers up to inhabit Hamlet’s chaotic madness.
But ultimately Sinclair has made this an ensemble show, with the cast working together beautifully. Whether it’s Aidara and Boxhall’s sibling repartee; Emmanuelle Mattana and Orion Carey-Clark as the adorkable duo Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or Collins-Levy and Herbert’s threatening mother-son battles, this is a cast working together in ways that breathe an earthy, lived-in quality to every dynamic.
These figures have always felt recognisable, but here their familiarity breathes a new life into what is Hamlet’s essential tragedy. Our Horatio, standing alone on a stage suddenly stark and empty, delivers an elegy that captures our grief as much as his – a mourning of what has been lost that lands as if we had lost a part of ourselves in this theatre somehow.
Hamlet
fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Performance: Friday 6 September 2024
Season continues to 22 September 2024
Bookings: www.fortyfivedownstairs.com
For more information, visit: www.melbourneshakespeare.com for details.
Images: Simon Maiden, Jacob Collins-Levy and Darcy Kent – photo by Ben Andrews | Darren Gilshenan – photo by Ben Andrews
Review: Guy Webster