OBSERVER: Hamlet
The National Theatre’s film of their stage production of Hamlet bears the marks of performers well versed in the delivery of Shakespeare’s lines.
What is interesting is Robert Hastie’s directorial decisions to change the order of some of the scenes and place some of the well known soliloquies in different places.
It makes for intriguing questions as to how the Bard might have altered the play’s sequence and omitted lines to suit a venue or occasion.
Hastie has also toyed with theatrical convention when it comes to acknowledging the fourth wall and how it can be transcended. There are also some quirky moments that seem almost too contemporary. Hamlet shoots Polonius with fingers shaped like a gun.
The setting (Ben Stones) is well managed, being the ballroom of a palace which can be altered to suit the moment; tables for a wedding feast, chairs to create seating for the play within a play.
Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting, especially with the hand held torches in the opening scene, is suitably atmospheric.
The greatest challenge, of course, is playing Hamlet. There is a treasury of expectations and a panoply of past performers who have all put their mark on the role. Hiran Abeysekera has to negotiate that as well as the emotional gymnastics of Hamlet’s mind; feigned madness, depression, manipulative plotting and paranoia both real and imagined.
What one finds with the role is that there is always more to be done.
This production moves with reasonable pace and is consistently rendered but the effect might have been different in a theatre as opposed to a cinema. There are moments when Hamlet leaves the stage the effect of which doesn’t translate to the screen.
But take it ‘as you like it’, there’s something for everyone.
Confirmed Cinemas: Cinema Nova (Carlton), Classic Cinemas (Elsternwick), Lido Cinemas (Hawthorn) and Sun Theatre (Yarraville).
Review by David McLean