Hamlet at the NT on tour

The National Theatre’s touring production of Hamlet that my partner and I saw last night at the Lowry Theatre in Greater Manchester was for both of us a disaster.

Poor diction - heavy trundling scenery - sudden screeching like vixens on heat - weak characterisation - at least a couple of the cast appeared to be on chloroform.  Loose wandering about and masking each other.  We enjoyed a good grumble in the car on our way home so thanks for that.  We nearly left half way through
– I noticed that three people in the row ahead had done just that.

Poor bloody actors, at least you had a full house.  The NT should be ashamed to have demanded so much of  the cast.  As for bad directors, We’re dragons up here and gobble 'em up.

If any production goes to prove that working in TV weakens the muscles required for acting then this is it.

Get in a voice coach and some sleep, and pray - and of course, we wish you all all the best.

Love is

On my return home from London last week, where my partner and I had been to see Terrance Rattigan's play "Less Than Kind" at the Jermyn Street Theatre, I turned round as I was stepping into the metro, Northern Line, and, for a split second came eye to eye with one of two women who were in each other's arms. 
They touched hands as if their fingers were made of a gossamer of great value.  They were in another world.  The one who looked straight at me didn't see me, even though I could have reached out and touched her.  They could have been out of a modern production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  As soon as I got home I spent some time trying to recapture their moment of rapture, first with charcoal and fountain pen and then with colours on the pc. I changed their ethnicity.  It was a moment of really super theatre stronger even than the excellent play I had just seen...and why? well, I suppose, I didnt have to suspend my disbelief.

Terence Rattigan's "Less Than Kind" playing at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London is a delight.

On our drive home, my partner and I chatted over how much we'd enjoyed the play and the acting, but agreed that there seemed to be something at variance with Rattigan's craftsmanship and the energy that the character, Michael, back home from Canada, had had to put into NOT appearing to be quite the awful young prig that his lines suggested.

We felt there was something missing, and that this might have been due to the passing of time.   Had the play been performed when it was written in 1944 audiences would have quickly recognised Michael as being someone under the spell of Moral Re-Armament, a worldwide organisation - but one that at the end of the war was to come under a very dark cloud.  People were remembering that its founder, Frank Buchman, had had dealings with the Nazis and Himmler, and, in the New York World-Telegram on August 26th 1936 had thanked God "for a man like Hitler".

Following the suggestion in the programme notes that the character of Sir John Fletcher was based on the influential Canadian, Lord Beaverbrook, I looked up MRA on the web and made an interesting connection.  It seems that there had been a scandal in Canada with regard to the tough methods involved in collecting money going to support what was seen as an inappropriate life style for the leaders of MRA.

Once, on theatre tour in Scotland, I heard from a group of ladies who had set up a hostel to care for sick miners in Stirlingshire, that Moral Rearmament had closed its doors to them in a most cruel manner because they suspected them of being lesbians.  From what I read, MRA put up a front of implacable homophobia to hide from the world Buchman's own homosexuality - an example of hypocrisy that might have added energy to Rattigan knocking the corners off Michael's 'superiority'. And, I suggest, would also have added authenticity to the character without straining the credulity of the audience of the time.

Spoken English in film and television

My partner and I watched a recording of the film “Atonement” last night.  'Watched' being the operative word.  We both got the impression that the actors were ashamed of using their organs of speech - they hid so much sensual enjoyment by mumbling and swallowing their consonants and croaking their vowels throughout the film.

It is strange to have to remind actors and actresses that tongues and lips are used in sex and speech.  I thought it ironic that Vanessa Redgrave, appearing right at the end of the film, and seemingly at the end of her character’s life, to give what was, in fact, a short master class on how it’s done.

I remember a fellow theatre director in 1969 complaining that theatre schools no longer taught their students how to speak on stage – now they seem not to teach them how to speak to any effect other than to irritate.

Hamlet: Fortinbras - the king is dead, long live the king

Hamlet, the play, begins with Denmark preparing to repel an invasion led by Fortinbras, a Prince of Norway.  This is soon dealt with and the audience sits back to enjoy the twists, turns and complication resulting from Hamlet’s meeting with the Ghost of his murdered father.  It isn’t until Act 4, scene 4 that, to everyone’s surprise, the matter of Danish sovereignty re-emerges.  However, it goes away again so quickly as to be thought dispensable by some directors and is cut - I think wrongly.  The audience needs a reminder of the initial threat to Denmark’s sovereignty to fully appreciate what happens at the very end when the crown falls into the Fortinbras’ hands almost, one might say, by sheer chance. I think this is a play about the succession to the throne and how rottenness, ghostly visitations, uncertainty, murder, piracy, madness, and villainy, fades into insignificance under the steady guiding hand of heaven - an idea that is easy to lose sight of in a secular world.

Claudius’ act of diplomacy towards Fortinbras yields a rich harvest for the state, if not for his court. It sets in train a sequence of events, for the most part played off-stage, that finally puts the right man at the top. Since the Norwegian Prince sheds no Danish blood, strictly observes protocol when setting out with his army to cross peacefully Danish land, and is elected to the monarchy by Hamlet, he succeeds to the throne squeaky clean. Although we are told very little about Fortinbras, what we are able to glean shows him to have ‘a little
touch of Harry’ about him. Like his famous prototype, Henry V, he is warlike and headstrong, nevertheless obedient to those in authority over him and, when it matters, an opportunist. Hamlet has this to say:

    Witness this army of such mass and charge,
    Led by a delicate and tender prince,
    Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,
    Makes mouths at the invisible event,
    Exposing what is mortal and unsure
    To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
    Even for an eggshell.
                                               (IV.iv.7)

I am interested by the phrase ‘divine ambition puff’d’.  If Shakespeare is not using the word ‘divine’ loosely, and I think he is not - divine, and the idea of things divine, is used seriously in other parts of the play, ‘puff’d’ is a straightforward description of a man buoyed up by heaven’s will.   Divinity and Heaven are important in this play. Fortinbras is portrayed as a man of high mettle - and a very proper person to win the Danish throne.