2007<\/p>\n
Hamlet<\/p>\n
by William Shakespeare<\/p>\n
State Theatre Company<\/p>\n
and Queensland Theatre Company<\/p>\n
April 3. Dunstan Playhouse. Until April 21<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
The main task with Hamlet is to make him come alive. Whatever the leanings in interpretation \u00a0– that he be older or younger, bookish scholar or renaissance cleverboots, devious or bi-polar – Hamlet has to engage us in his bid to unmask a murder conspiracy, even though he says, and does, things which don\u2019t add up. This raises questions of motivation and psychology. Hamlet is a much-analysed subject and the appeal and enigma of the play is that, after all these years, and all those performances and interpretations, the case is still open.<\/p>\n
In casting dynamic young actor Cameron Goodall in the lead, Adam Cook has made a clear choice in the direction of this newest State Theatre\/Queensland Theatre co- production. Goodall\u2019s boyish looks carry a vulnerability as well as youthful energy and his performance is the highlight of the play. With his punky black hair, his goth-dark coat with furry hood and frisky stage movement, he aptly suits Ophelia\u2019s report of \u2013\u201c his pale feature of blown youth \/Blasted with ecstacy\u201d \u2013 especially in its coincidence with current slang.<\/p>\n
His is an inventive, discursive, sometimes startling performance. The emphasis on his adolescent unworldliness provides us with lively sketches of Hamlet\u2019s petulance and unpredictability \u2013 his surly responses to Claudius and the latter\u2019s weary tolerance, his prank with the Mousetrap play, his teasing of Polonius, and the dissociated denial of the old man\u2019s stabbing.<\/p>\n
Adam Cook \u00a0would have done well to marshal this energy more deftly and wrap his production around it like a glove. The essentially domestic scale of its world, the size and capability of its cast and the drift of its meaning all call for it being staged in the Space not in the huge expanse of the Playhouse. I know economies prevent that, but those of us who saw Neil Armfield\u2019s Belvoir Street version with Richard Roxburgh remember not just a fine cast but the revelation of the play as chamber work.<\/p>\n
Instead, designer Bruce McKinven\u2019s set – a handsome but huge curved wooden fort engraved with what looks like a Danish roll of honour – creates an edifice that unduly dwarfs the action. That may work as a theme but not as a practicality and any gesture towards political themes (including the misplaced scene with Hamlet getting the Abu Ghraib bucket treatment from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) is lost with the cutting of the Fortinbras subplot.\u00a0 Kathryn Sproul\u2019s mixed style costumes also create unhelpful discrepancies \u00a0with Lewis Carroll frockcoats for the royals and WW II military uniforms for the court.\u00a0 And, further undoing the already faltering chemistry between Hamlet and his bride-to-be in this production – a black stovepipe Bad Seed suit for Cameron Goodall and Sound of Music<\/em> blouse and skirt for Emily Tomlins\u2019 Ophelia.<\/p>\n In fact, Cameron Goodall\u2019s puckish lead performance \u2013 which would have suited a posse of Wittenberg emos to go with it – finds few others in the cast to mesh with. Sean Taylor\u2019s reading of Claudius is excellent and – as he ponces about, lovestruck in his ruffle and Cuban heels – almost sympathetic. Barbara Lowing, as Gertrude, is also memorable, not least in her anguished report of Ophelia\u2019s death, and Dennis Olsen brings wit and comedy to the pedantry of Polonius and dignity to his devotion.<\/p>\n Other performances fare less well \u2013 John Trutwin\u2019s Laertes improves by Act Five and Joss McWilliam is not helped, nor is Cameron Goodall, by the clunky staging of the ghost scene. Overall, it must be said, with the talents of two cities to draw upon, Adam Cook could have found a batting order with more depth. This Hamlet <\/em>will work especially well with audiences new to the play, the pace is fast, the action clear and Cameron Goodall is fun and familiar to watch. But it is well short of the complex tragedy that the text invites. In Cook\u2019s loosely managed production, this boy wonder Hamlet has no more hope of revenging the crimes \u2013 or follies \u2013 of his elders than any teenage rebel. He was always going to be voted out of the house.<\/p>\n The Adelaide Review, No.314, April 13, 2007, p.15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2007 Hamlet by William Shakespeare State Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company April 3. Dunstan Playhouse. Until April 21 Reviewed by Murray Bramwell The main task with Hamlet is to make him come alive. Whatever the leanings in interpretation \u00a0– that he be older or younger, bookish scholar or renaissance cleverboots, devious or bi-polar – Hamlet has to engage us in his bid to unmask a murder conspiracy, even though he says, and does, things which don\u2019t add up. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1428,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions\/1428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}