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Plays
International May
1989 Reviewed
by PETER
ROBERTS at
Hamlet Olivier
Theatre |
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In its first 25 years the National Theatre
has now mounted three home-grown revivals of Hamlet, directed by its
first three artistic directors. Laurence Olivier's production inaugurated the
proceedings in October 1963 with Peter O'Toole as the Prince and I remember
it now rather as piece d'occasion which
cannily united the old and the new orders - there were senior players like
Michael Redgrave and Diana Wynyarde
as Claudius and Gertrude and an up-and-coming generation like Rosemary
Harris, who was Ophelia, acting on a revolving abstract set on the Old Vic
stage designed by the controversial and up-to-the-minute Irish designer,
Sean Kenny, who was busy blowing away the cobwebs of pictorial stage setting
and demonstrating that the new NT was to be no museum. When Peter Hall began his regime he was still stuck at the
Old Vic so Albert Finney's Prince was given in 1974 on the same stage as
O'Toole's and it was as Tumberlaine not Hamlet that
Finney inaugurated the Olivier theatre the following year. Now it is on this
wide open Olivier stage that Richard Eyre in his first year as National supremo has chosen to direct Daniel Day-Lewis as Hamlet. Like O'Toole, Day-Lewis belongs to the romantic tradition
of Hamlets. Indeed in his tall dark good looks he reminded me of a younger
edition of the famous Lawrence full-length painting in the Tate of Kemble as the Prince, done in 1804. So elongated do
Day-Lewis's hands and features seem and so lofty does he appear to be in
movement that one thinks too of another quite different painter - EI Greco.
So, as the drama gets underway, you are persuaded that perhaps this new
Prince is going to dominate the National's biggest auditorium and that it was
not, after all, unwise to expose him in such a complex and essentially
meditative role in such a large auditorium. Day-Lewis when he spoke struck me
at first as sounding a bit Welsh in intonation which is no bad thing in the
classics when you think of the likes of Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.
Yet, for all this, the great soliloquies are rarely ignited in Day-Lewis's
delivery and the gripping excitement that marked his movement (this Prince
has an odd way of darting about the stage from time to time) was not
reflected in his verse speaking, in spite of its intelligence. Richard Eyre is no stranger to Hamlet. He last
directed it at the Royal Court nine years ago and seems to have been inspired
by the intimate nature of that auditorium to stage it more daringly than the
present middle of the road production in the Olivier. Jonathan Pryce was the Prince on that occasion speaking the
Ghost's lines as well as his own as though possessed. Indeed so successful
was the enterprise it restored the Sloane Square venue's reputation for
Shakespeare so badly dented with fiascos like the Guinness/Signoret Macbeth and the Tony Richardson Dream. At the National Eyre has John Gunter as his designer
thereby renewing a partnership that was so successful in the Olivier on Guys
and Dolls. Gunter, as you might expect, is not intimidated by the
Olivier. The whole stage is used for the opening battlements scenes but once
inside the court he slices it down the middle. The set is dominated by a
statue of Hamlet père reminding one
of the Commedatore in Don Giovanni, and by
extension, of how Shaffer suggested in Amadeus how this character
represented a vengeful, displeased father. Otherwise, though the production
offers a measure of ceremony, there are no Bogdanov-like
updates to modem times. Judi Dench and John Castle
make a handsome youngish-looking Gertrude and Claudius who do not seem to be
able to keep their hands off one another - at least until this Hamlet makes
what comes across as an Oedipal confrontation with his mother in the boudoir
scene. But the most distinguished playing of the evening comes
from Michael Bryant as Polonius who resolutely avoids the easy laughs of a
senile and doddering interpretation though I was rather thrown by his
agonized loss of memory at one point as one could not be sure that it was not
the actor rather than the character who had forgot his lines. Still Bryant
does show, as he has on many occasions before on the South Bank, what can be
achieved when a fine actor stays working on the classics within a single
organization. Many will feel that Day-Lewis landed the title role because of
his success in the cinema and in the West End in modem roles and that he
would have carried it all off much better if like Bryant he served a long and
devoted apprenticeship in the classics. That does indeed seem to be an
essential problem with the newer generation of Shakespeare actors and one
that reduced state funding and increased reliance on the uncertainties of
sponsorship is not going to solve. |
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