I saw Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre last night. It was unlike any show I've ever seen. Shakespeare purists would not like this show -- but then again, I'm not sure why a Shakespeare purist would choose to see Hamlet in Russian. It seems impossible to translate iambic pentameter into Russian: Russian words have more syllables, and I just don't think it would work. I don't speak Russian so I don't know how they handled the language, but my impression was that they realized this shortcoming and made up for it in every other aspect of the production. Here's what I saw:
The setting seemed to be Siberia, with perhaps 20 metallic cords upstage stretched all the way across the stage, from ankle level to just above head level. Strung on the cords were sharp looking metallic objects that looked like tin cans and gave the impression of barbed wire. The actors could fall into the cords, pull them together, or step between them. In the second act, they were lowered to the floor so the actors could run across them.
Scene changes were incredibly smooth, circular, and flowing in nature and were covered by a combination of the actors moving their own furniture, and a sort of underground army of people dressed in black overcoats and black bowler hats rolling the set pieces on and off. In the opening scene when the guards are watching for the ghost, this army was sitting in silhouette along the back of the stage, each holding a red apple.
Movement and music in the play reminded me of Commedia del Arte, at times almost to the large, garish extreme of Cirque de Soleil. Actors walked on tables, flipped over chairs (made of twisted metal) to create other set pieces, and flipped tables end over end to move them around. There was a giant industrial-looking fan onstage to blow smoke around and also to create a strobe light effect with a light in front of it. During the play within a play, Rosencrantz held up a metallic tabletop as a mirror to show the audience a different perspective of the actors.
There was a sense of dark comedy about the piece. When Hamlet is faking madness, there is a giant sheet of plastic hanging like a curtain across the middle of the stage. Hamlet takes a bucket and goes back and forth underneath the curtain and seems to be urinating in the bucket, but then he comes out with a bottle of water and sprays Horatio, the stage, and himself. Then he grabs the curtain and spins around several times, wrapping himself up like a mummy and yelling as if trying to scare Horatio.
During the scene where King Claudius goes to a church and tries to pray, he struggles to flip a table over twice. This physical struggle makes it really clear what his lines are about. As he stands the table up after the second flip, there is a white cross painted on the underside of it to make it clear that he is in a church.
Toward the second act, the symbolism of the play seemed to get stronger. When Ophelia goes crazy, she comes onstage in a nightgown, sopping wet, and instead of handing out flowers, she tears off strips of her dress and throws them on the floor. There is a giant plank down the middle of the stage, and her father (who has died earlier) walks down and carries her away in his arms. It was one of the most poignant moments I have ever seen in the theatre.
For the first part of Ophelia's funeral, the coffin and all the characters except Hamlet were posed along the back of the stage and back lit with blue light so that all we could see were their silhouettes. I have never seen a scene played for so long in silhouette, and it added a really creepy, otherworldly feeling to the scene. At the end of the scene, the coffin dropped through the table, so it looked like it dropped into the ground.
Throughout the play, scraps of paper and sawdust were used in scenes and left onstage. For me, this gave an increasing feeling that everything was falling apart.
Before the end of the play, they added a dream sequence showing the fight at the end of the play. Then for the last scene, all the characters (including Ophelia and Polonius who are dead) enter the stage twirling black bowler hats on the ends of sticks. Then everyone sits down around a rectangular wooden table and a bunch of silverware is thrown dramatically onto the table. There is no swordfight but just the lines, and every time a "hit" is made, everyone at the table takes a breath in and raises their chest and face toward the sky, then slams their hands onto the table at the same time.
The play left me with an immense feeling of unease, foreboding, and darkness. I thought I had seen dark plays before, but this one gave me a whole new idea of black humor. Hamlet is not a comedy, it is a tragedy, but somehow this play was both funnier and more tragic than I thought the story was. Was this a traditional production of Hamlet? Absolutely not. Was it what Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote the play? I seriously doubt it. But I loved it because it highlighted themes that exist in the play in shocking, thought-provoking, highly creative ways.
And I got to see my master acting teacher play Rosencrantz.
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