Hamlet (Play)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      A Rebound for a Summer Pairing of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Oresteia’ at the Armory

      by

      Two Robert Icke productions have endured illnesses and last-minute casting changes. Now they have finally settled into a repertory groove.Perhaps more than any other production of this post-shutdown season, the Park Avenue Armory’s summer stagings of “Hamlet” and “Oresteia” — with their last-minute replacements and cast illnesses — have faced the most hurdles on their way to opening night.The productions, already delayed from their intended 2020 U.S. premieres, were dealt another blow this spring when, two days into tech rehearsals, Lia Williams (“The Crown”) tore her Achilles’ tendon. She was double booked to play Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, and the husband-killing matriarch Klytemnestra in “Oresteia,” but recovery, though guaranteed, would not be quick. She was forced to drop out. Jennifer Ehle and Anastasia Hille quickly stepped in, with Ehle having only 10 days to settle into the role of Gertrude before the first “Hamlet” preview.“I had no idea what I was getting into, and I really didn’t care,” Ehle said during a recent video call. “It was one of those moments where you get a call on a Sunday morning, somebody asks if you want to take a challenge, and you have no choice but to take the leap and start planning in midair.”The plays, helmed by the English writer-director Robert Icke, are now being performed in repertory at the Armory, where they will run through mid-August. “Hamlet” opened in late June to mostly positive reviews. (Maya Phillips, in her review for The Times, wrote that Icke “brings a cinematic eye to the proceedings, using foreground and background to create dimension.”) “Oresteia” began previews July 10, and is set to open Tuesday. Once it does, this ambitious pairing of classics of the Western canon will conclude a nearly seven-year journey of starts and stops.“Everybody knew where they were going to stand and I had to upload that as quickly as possible,” Ehle (with Lawther) said of joining the cast of “Hamlet” during tech rehearsals.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow It All StartedThe plays had momentous premieres (“Oresteia” in 2015 and “Hamlet” in 2017) at London’s Almeida Theater, where Icke had been associate director, and successful West End runs followed. Writing from London in 2015, Ben Brantley said Icke’s “theatrical chutzpah pays dividends” in his drastically reimagined “Oresteia,” Aeschylus’ revenge-filled trilogy.That ancient Greek work and the surveillance-heavy “Hamlet,” with the actor Andrew Scott in the title role, cemented Icke’s status as an incisive editor and renovator of classics. Not that editing here means trimming down — each production clocks in at just under four hours — but Icke’s revisions bring the centuries-old plays’ essences to stark, ultramodern light.As planning began for the Shakespeare adaptation, he and Hildegard Bechtler, the set and costume designer, decided to reuse a frosted glass they had used in “Oresteia,” allowing them to achieve something like a cinematic jump cut. It’s what first led him to think of the two pieces as similar.“There was an acknowledgment that these two plays, though separated by many centuries, are in conversation with each other,” Icke explained during a recent video call, quarantining after testing positive for the coronavirus. “Those central questions about family and vengeance, and the obligations children have to their parents, and what it means if a family and a country are intertwined with each other, always felt like they were reflecting and refracting each other in really interesting ways.”Pierre Audi, the Armory’s artistic director and founder of the Almeida, suggested bringing a repertory pairing of the two works to Manhattan back in 2018. Having met the Armory team while in town in 2017 for the Broadway premiere of his and Duncan Macmillan’s “1984” adaptation, Icke said it felt like it could be “a fruitful collaboration,” and the productions were announced for 2020.Williams, who had played Klytemnestra to great acclaim in “Oresteia,” would reprise that role, and play opposite Alex Lawther in “Hamlet,” who was cast after Scott was unable to commit to the transfer. But then the pandemic shut down live theater in 2020 and many planned productions were canceled, though everyone wanted to keep these two afloat. (In the meantime, Icke collaborated with the actress Ann Dowd on a socially distanced adaptation of “Enemy of the People” at the Armory last summer.)Angus Wright, seated at the table and projected onto the screen, in “Oresteia” at the Armory. In the foreground, from left, are Wesley Holloway, Anastasia Hille and Elyana Faith Randolph.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesA Pairing With ‘Poetic Logic’In April 2022, the company finally reunited and began rehearsals. Because of the plays’ length and density, the focus on each alternated on a weekly basis. Lawther said he enjoyed the repertory setting and “the luxury of watching this amazing company switch and suddenly do this Greek tragedy.”“They speak to one another in incredibly moving and mysterious ways,” Lawther said on a video call. “Although ‘Oresteia’ is much older, Rob’s adaptation is full of modern language, and feels like a contemporary family drama, whereas this ‘Hamlet’ uses the original text, and feels of a different time. There’s a poetic logic that exists in putting these two together.”While the productions share a set and much of the same acting troupe, Icke said he did not go out of his way to heighten the two works’ similarities.“The attempt is not to direct them to point back to each other,” he said, “but almost to hang the two paintings next to each other in a gallery, so that if audiences choose to, they can move back and forth and think about the ways in which the two might relate.”Written nearly 2,000 years apart, the works deal with chaos unfolding in the private homes of high-powered political families. Almost entirely stripped of period or royal specificity, the modern-dress productions allow Icke to focus on contemporary parallels. With “Hamlet,” it’s the British royal family.“This time, we talked about Prince Philip’s death and what it’s like for an old guard to die,” he said. “But I’ve always felt like Hamlet and Princess Diana have got something in common. You’re told again and again that he is adored by the people, and that one of the reasons [the king] does not have him packed off to prison immediately is because of how much the people love him. That sense of somebody struggling to make sense of themselves, and what’s happening to them, while under constant observation always took my mind to Diana.”For “Oresteia,” he said the story’s setup, with Agamemnon coming back from war with a new woman, would have meant for ancient Greek audiences what the Kennedy and Clinton families might signify to contemporary viewers.“Audiences then would’ve known their Homer back-to-front, so it was probably similar to telling audiences back then that the Monica Lewinsky scandal has just broken,” Icke continued. “Here’s Hillary, and Bill is about to walk through the front door. A modern American audience feels that. In another thousand years, to tell the Clinton story, you probably will have to go back and fill in the Lewinsky part of the story to get it across.”Luke Treadaway as Orestes, Klytemnestra and Agamemnon’s traumatized son, in “Oresteia.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesA Necessary PivotAfter Williams’s injury, “Hamlet” performances were pushed back, giving Ehle a little over a week to learn the part of Queen Gertrude for the first time. But Hille, who is British, needed to secure a work visa, and that forced “Oresteia” to be delayed nearly a month.When she got the call, Ehle said, “I thought, if the Armory has brought this man here, with these people, to tell this story, it couldn’t be anything but interesting.”Ehle, a two-time Tony winner for her work in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia,” described the process of situating herself within the production as “less rehearsing and more orienteering.”“Everybody knew where they were going to stand and I had to upload that as quickly as possible, and jump on a moving train,” she recalled. “My seat was there waiting, but I had to figure out where to put my luggage.”Many hours of last-minute rehearsals were required — Lawther called it a “baptism by fire” — with Hille, who was preparing with Icke via Zoom while awaiting her visa, only arriving in New York on July 3, just days before the first previews of “Oresteia.” Around that time, Ehle tested positive for coronavirus, and had to briefly retreat from “Hamlet.”“It’s pretty much impossible to do anything without everyone in the room,” Icke said, referring to absences resulting from Covid. “But this has been much easier because the big-picture decisions and structures had already been in place. We were able to focus on the details of the performances, rather than our sound design or choice of music.”Luke Treadaway, the British actor who plays Laertes in “Hamlet” and Orestes, Klytemnestra’s son, in “Oresteia,” had been preparing for the roles since 2020 and noted the effects of the changes on the ensemble. “The cast changes had a huge emotional impact on us all, because rehearsals become a world that you create with the people you create it with,” he explained. “We’ve had many understudies come on, because of Covid. It made us realize that it’s not just 10 actors in a cast, or however many, but a squad of people getting these two massive stories onstage every night, in any form we can.”Icke also acknowledged the resiliency of actors. “Anyone who has done much theater is very aware that everything can change in a second, particularly in Covid times,” he said. “It’s remarkable how adaptable everybody is, saying, ‘Well, this isn’t what we thought it was going to be, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. We’re really glad to be here and delighted to be presented with two productions.’ It all sort of just recalibrates itself.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In a Powerful ‘Hamlet,’ a Fragile Prince Faces His Foes

      by

      Alex Lawther makes for an especially riveting hero in Robert Icke’s chic if imperfect modern-dress production at the Park Avenue Armory.Many Hamlets I’ve seen are wily. Some kooky. Narcissistic, aloof, even pretentious. Less common is a Hamlet who is tender and romantic and achingly vulnerable, like a petal falling from the head of a flower at the end of its bloom.When Alex Lawther’s fragile Danish prince drags himself onstage in Robert Icke’s modern-dress production of “Hamlet,” which opened Tuesday night at the Park Avenue Armory, he recalls the 19th-century poets Arthur Rimbaud and Percy Shelley, a brilliant yet dejected young man who seems resolved to his sorrow — and to a tragic end.In the last decade, Icke has gained prominence for his heightened and contemporary-inflected adaptations of classics. This “Hamlet” played in the West End in 2017, with the hot-priest-sized package of magnetizing charisma known as Andrew Scott in the lead. He was one of the best Hamlets I’ve ever seen — though, as in so many other takes, the focus fell on his brooding and banter more than his emotional depth.Lawther, best known for his role in “The End of the __ing World,” doesn’t have Scott’s starry flair, but he possesses his own demure kind of charisma; he draws you in even as he withdraws into himself. As a result, this rendition honors Hamlet as not just self-indulgently melancholy, but as grappling with legitimate, heartbreaking loss.We begin at a swanky wedding party. (Hildegard Bechtler did the stylish sets and costumes.) Beyond a wall of sliding glass panels, we see Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude (Jennifer Ehle), and her new husband, his uncle Claudius (Angus Wright), dancing amid balloons and strings of lights. Dressed in a black suit, Lawther slowly shuffles across the stage and sits close to, but removed from, the action. He roughly rubs his palms against his thighs, as though to rub the fabric off his body.Throughout the hefty 3-hour-and-45 minute production, Lawther fully embodies Hamlet’s despondency, shuffling like a wayward toddler, with knees slightly bent and a constant sway that makes him appear near collapse. Planning to enact his vengeance on his scheming uncle, he holds a gun off at an angle, as though his arm is being puppeted by someone else pulling the strings above the stage.And when he speaks, it’s in a slow, warbling singsong, at once contemplative and idiosyncratic, especially when he pauses in the middle of sentences as though his mind is hiccuping with existential thoughts.Though the peculiar line readings sometimes turn monotonous, he snaps out of it, erupting into a surprising fit of mania. And Lawther threads the famed “What a piece of work is man!” monologue with poetic resonance, moving from wonder to despair through slow articulation and emphatic rhythm.From left: Lawther, Michael Abubakar, Hara Yannas, Angus Wright (as Claudius),Gilbert Kyem Jnr and Tia Bannon in the modern-dress production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIcke, whose one-woman “Enemy of the People” played the Armory last year and whose “1984” had a brief Broadway run in 2017, brings a cinematic eye to the proceedings, using foreground and background to create dimension. In one clever bit of staging, Hamlet tarries in the forefront as the king and queen canoodle in back and guards race by mid-stage between them, fresh from sighting the former king’s ghost.At the same time, the director brings some curious adjustments to the characters, giving Polonius a touch of dementia and depicting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a couple clearly at odds about how they should respond to the royal request to monitor Hamlet.The women, in particular, get short shrift. Gertrude is unreadable, despite Ehle’s punchy line readings, and Ophelia’s descent into madness occurs faster than you can say “something rotten” — doing a disservice to Kirsty Rider’s perfectly matched delicate companion to Lawther’s Hamlet.As Claudius, Wright has the self-consciously composed air of a politician but misses some of the menace, while Peter Wight leans too heavily on the bumbling as Polonius. Luke Treadaway, however, makes the most of Laertes’s transformation: from refined gentleman and doting brother to unhinged revenge seeker, wildly swinging a gun at the news of his father’s murder and sister’s suicide.There are actual gunshots, too — ghastly pops and flashes of light that make the audience jump to attention. This is nowhere as gratuitous as, say, the 2019 DruidShakespeare production of “Richard III,” or even the current Broadway staging of “Macbeth,” with its severed limbs and crotch wounds. Still, the sight and sound of a gun onstage today, given our country’s despicable relationship to firearms, is unsettling.What’s most frustrating about Icke’s otherwise intriguing approach is the inessential, and, by now, highly unoriginal, incorporation of high tech. A grid of 12 screens hangs overhead, and two larger screens flank the stage, showing security footage from the castle and news reports about Denmark’s conflict with Norway.Clockwise, from lower right: Lawther (as Hamlet), Kirsty Rider (as Ophelia), Luke Treadaway (as her brother Laertes), Wright and Kyem.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe screens also flash “pause” and “stop” before the two intermissions and the final scene, mawkishly calling attention to the audience as spectators. The way Icke and the lighting designer Natasha Chivers handle several of Hamlet’s monologues is more effective; soft overhead light halos Lawther as he seems to addresses theatergoers directly from the edge of the stage, only to snap off when he’s done speaking.Tom Gibbons’s sound design envelops the proceedings in ominous atmospheric gloom:a distant howling wind; the cold, mechanical hum of static and feedback; and, finally, the thunderous exclamations of drums. Less fitting are the production’s folksy compositions (by Laura Marling) and use of Bob Dylan songs, which, even deployed ironically, are a bit too Midwest-porch-jam for this chic production.“Hamlet” is one of the Shakespeare plays that most suffers from diminishing returns — adaptations that try too hard to innovate, to render a classic modern and hip. Though Icke’s protracted production occasionally falls into that trap, ultimately the creative team’s visual and technical prowess — along with its provocative young lead — make this a tale of musing, mania and murder for our age.HamletThrough Aug. 13 at the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory; armoryonpark.org. Running time: 3 hours 45 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      To Play Hamlet, Alex Lawther Became an ‘Expert on Grief’

      by

      The British actor shares what helped him transform into the doomed Danish prince: French poetry, “Pandemonium,” and postcard art (with breaks for lemon cake).Alex Lawther, known for his portrayal of troubled young men in projects like “The End of the __ing World” and “Black Mirror,” has taken on the Western canon’s moodiest: the title role in “Hamlet,” now running at the Park Avenue Armory.Though the English actor, 27, said his second New York stage appearance (following 2019’s “The Jungle” at St. Ann’s Warehouse) is going smoothly, the production has not been without its troubles, including an injury during rehearsals that delayed the premiere and led to the last-minute recasting of Gertrude.“Angus Wright, who plays Claudius and did so back in London, says he’s now played the part with four different Gertrudes,” Lawther said. “I suppose it’s a testament to the resilience and flexibility of actors that there’s no such thing as ownership of parts; you just find your feet in a company.”In a recent interview, Lawther described the works of art that have helped him get into the play’s tragic key; in order to embody Shakespeare’s doomed prince, he said he was counseled by the director, Robert Icke, to “become an expert on grief.”“The wonderful thing about literature is that there’s so much grief — it’s something of a whole genre,” he laughed. “So I readied some literary allies and friends, as it were; books and poets I could turn to that offered some sort of reflection on Hamlet, accidentally or not.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Pandemonium” by Andrew McMillan One of my best friends gave it to me on my birthday, and I read it in one sitting. It deals with acute suffering, but with such a language that you might have with a friend on the phone. Toward the end of the book, there are a lot of allusions to working a garden, and the connection between that, the relationship the speaker has to someone they love, and the struggle between keeping the garden alive and keeping this loved person alive. It’s not an easy read, but it’s very moving.2. The song “Grace” by Kae Tempest I started listening to the album this is from, “The Line Is a Curve,” as rehearsals kicked off, but not because I was searching for a soundtrack to the play in any way. This last song is like some ancient saint has looked something terrible in the face and come back from that only interested in talking about love. There’s this sense of experiencing pain and responding to it with masses of love. I listen to this song every night before I go onstage.3. “The Argonauts” by Maggie Nelson I remember a director once saying to me that sometimes it’s useful to think of text as an obstacle, and that you’ll never really get to say what you want to say. In the book, Maggie and her partner Harry have a conversation quite similar to that, about how you can’t blame a net for having holes, or something like that. That was a facet of something I was trying to understand with the heavy, thorny text of Shakespeare.4. “Paroles” by Jacques Prévert I live partly in France, and I speak quite good French now, but I didn’t when I first arrived. So I was trying to find French writers that I could read in French to try and get better. Prévert is amazing because, as a writer, he has immense profundity, but his language is really, really simple. For a non-speaker, you can sort of sit there quite happily, with a pencil, reading his poems, which are often quite short and with simple syntax. It’s words you might learn in high school, but the ordering of them is so beautiful.5. “Keep the Lights On” (2012) dir. Ira Sachs I wanted to watch a film set in New York before coming here, and I’d seen this one years ago and been really moved by it. It sat in my brain for a while and came back to me. There’s something so vulnerable and tender and sort of feral about Thure Lindhardt’s performance in it.6. Nigel Slater’s lemon and thyme cake I have some things that I cook again and again, and one of them is this cake. My mom introduced me to Nigel Slater, and now we both buy each other his cookbooks for Christmas. It’s basically a lemon drizzle cake but with a ton of almond powder, so it’s very moist, but it feels very grown up because you put thyme in it. It makes me feel like I’ve got control over my life and quite sophisticated, which are both sort of fantasies of mine.7. “A Common Turn” by Anna B Savage This is her debut album, and it’s extraordinary to have the courage to be as frank as she is here. It’s this otherworldly voice that touches on something almost operatic, something huge and expansive and intimate. She’s going to cringe if she reads this, but I gave our Ophelia, Kirsty Writer, a copy of this album because there’s something I think Hamlet’s obsessed with about using honesty as a tool. I think he would love Savage’s music for that reason.8. Duncan MacAskill’s postcard art MacAskill has a project he’s been doing for decades where he will send other artists pieces of his own work to wherever they are in residency. They might just be colors or cartography or collage, and he’ll often put a GPS coordinate on them, which points you to another place in London.I love the idea of an artist being in conversation with another artist through their work. I think it’s good, when you’re working in a group, to remember that there’s other work being made elsewhere, and that we’re all part of something a little bit larger.9. “Mayflies” by Andrew O’Hagan The friend who gave this to me described it as an ode to friendship, which I think is a better way of putting it than I possibly could. It’s about two young men who are best friends during their high school years. The first part is about this crazy, sort of filthy weekend they spend in Manchester and how that weekend encapsulates the whole of their youth. In the second half, 30 years later, one of them is terminally ill. It tricks you into thinking it is a coming-of-age story, but it’s more about coming to terms.10. “The Sopranos” It does something I suppose we’re trying to do with this production, which is making something on a very big scale that is ultimately about the fractured nature of being part of a family, and how complicated it is to live with other people. They live in a castle, and the choices they make influence the well-being of an entire state, but they’re still struggling as mother and son, sister and brother. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      BAM’s Next Wave Festival Returns With an Ivo Van Hove Production

      by

      The American premiere of the brutal play “A Little Life,” a drag-infused Hamlet and an immersive celestial installation highlight the festival’s latest iteration.The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s artistic director, David Binder, who is programming the 13 shows for the Next Wave Festival, is mixing “incredible light” and darkness, he said.It is the first in-person edition of the festival since 2019 and it will run from Sept. 28 to Dec. 22. The highlight will be the U.S. premiere of the stage adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel “A Little Life” (Oct. 20-29) — a coming-of-age tale about four young men that includes depictions of self-harm, domestic violence, child abuse and suicide.“There’s optimism and there’s things that speak to the challenging world we all live in,” Binder said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “So I think it relates to one piece of all of that mosaic.”Ivo van Hove’s production of Yanagihara’s Kirkus Prize-winning novel, which is set to be presented in Dutch with English supertitles at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, runs just over four hours and features a live video screen to show close-ups of agonizing moments, like a character burning his own arm — and pouring salt in the wound. (Yanagihara is the editor in chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.)“It’s an extraordinary production that challenges the audience,” said Binder, who saw the world premiere production in Amsterdam in 2018. “Much like the whole season.”Even though it’s long, he said, “I guarantee you it holds you every moment.”This is just the second Next Wave Festival that Binder, who started as BAM’s artistic director in 2018, has programmed, after the 2020 and 2021 events were canceled because of the pandemic. He told The New York Times in 2019 that his focus for the first event would “move it forward by adding in a whole new slew of artists,” and that emphasis continues this year, with 13 programs created in eight countries featuring dance, music and theater. Nine of the 13 artists and companies are performing at BAM for the first time.“That was our guiding principle,” he said this week, “to cover a lot of ground with lots of international new artists.”One of the returning artists is the German director Thomas Ostermeier, whose riotous production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” will come to BAM’s Harvey Theater stage this fall (Oct. 27-Nov. 5). In Ostermeier’s staging, Ophelia and Gertrude are played by the same actor — as are many of the other characters; the play features just six performers. (The Guardian called the production of it in Berlin, which mixed pop music and drag shows with duels, “kookily funny and coolly self-aware.”)Next up at the Harvey will be the U.S. premiere of the Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues’s carnivalesque dance piece “Encantado,” whose title refers to spirits of healing — the encantados — and which features 100 colored blankets that transform the stage (Nov. 8-9). Meanwhile, at the Howard Gilman Opera House, another dance piece, the Greek director-choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou’s dreamlike concoction “Transverse Orientation,” pairing experimental, painterly choreography with music by Vivaldi, will have its New York premiere, Nov. 7-11.Then the main stage shifts to opera with the U.S. premiere of Ong Keng Sen’s “Trojan Woman,” a queer Korean operatic take on the Greek tragedy (Nov. 18-19). The production, performed in Korean with English subtitles, fuses the traditional Korean musical storytelling form of pansori with K-pop music. (The “Parasite” composer Jung Jae-il composed the music in collaboration with the renowned Korean pansori master Ahn Sook-sun.)Binder also programmed work from within the United States, including an orchestral hip-hop performance by the Los Angeles producer and rapper Flying Lotus, the composer and D.J. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Wordless Music Orchestra that is being billed as a rendition of their Hollywood Bowl performance in Los Angeles this summer (Oct. 6-7).The festival is set to wrap up with an immersive installation by the Brooklyn-based interactive-electronics artist Andrew Schneider, whose world premiere of “N O W I S W H E N W E A R E (the stars)” at BAM Fisher may be the closest a New Yorker will come to clear-sky stargazing (Nov. 29- Dec. 22). Visitors will enter a completely dark space and be guided by an unseen voice as 5,000 programmed points of light, which the artist has said are inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s “infinity” mirror room, respond to everyone individually.The season also features the American premiere of the Belgian theater collective FC Bergman’s wordless production of “300 el x 50 el x 30 el” (Sept. 28-Oct. 1), which follows the inhabitants of a small village fearful of an impending disaster. (The title refers to the dimensions of Noah’s Ark.) The Argentine choreographer Constanza Macras will showcase “Open for Everything,” which sheds light on contemporary Romany people, at the Harvey (Oct. 5-8). The Grammy-winning violinist Jennifer Koh and the bass-baritone Davóne Tines’s staged musical work “Everything Rises,” which seeks to “replace abstract slogans and inert diversity statements with lived experience and direct engagement,” will be at BAM Fisher (Oct. 12-15). More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Park Avenue Armory Announces Futuristic New Season

      by

      Highlights include the North American premieres of Michel van der Aa’s opera “Upload” and Robert Icke’s production of “Hamlet.”The Park Avenue Armory is taking a forward-looking approach in its 2022 season.“The current that runs through this season is technology and futuristic outlooks on the world,” Rebecca Robertson, the Armory’s president and executive producer, said in an interview on Tuesday.A highlight of the season, announced on Wednesday, is the North American premiere of the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa’s 80-minute opera “Upload,” about a man who uploads a digital version of his consciousness to achieve virtual immortality (March 22-30, 2022). In a review of the production at the Dutch National Opera, The New York Times’s Joshua Barone called the piece, which combines film, motion capture and live performance and stars the soprano Julia Bullock and the baritone Roderick Williams, “a sci-fi spin on a fundamentally human tale.”Next up, the British director Robert Icke presents a surveillance-focused staging of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” which will make its North American premiere after sold-out runs at London’s Almeida Theater and the West End in 2017 (May 31-Aug. 13, 2022). Alex Lawther (“The Imitation Game”) will take on the titular role, which Andrew Scott played to critical acclaim in London.“Hamlet” will play in repertory with Icke’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” (June 9-Aug. 13, 2022) — for which he won the Olivier Award for best director in 2016. Originally a trilogy of Greek tragedies, the three plays have been condensed into a single family drama that follows a succession of brutal family murders and runs just over three and a half hours. Lia Williams, who was nominated for an Olivier for best actress in the 2015 production, is set to return in the role of Klytemnestra.Other highlights of the new season include “Assembly,” an exhibition featuring the second generation of Rashaad Newsome’s artificial-intelligence-powered creation “Being,” whose voice acts as the installation’s soundscape (Feb. 16-March 6, 2022); “Rothko Chapel,” a new commission by the composer and MacArthur fellow Tyshawn Sorey, based on Morton Feldman’s composition for the dedication of the chapel in 1971 and directed by Peter Sellars (Sept. 27-Oct. 8, 2022); and “Euphoria,” an immersive film installation by the German video and film artist Julian Rosefeldt that is a commentary on money, greed and consumption (Nov. 30, 2022-Jan. 1, 2023).A full season lineup is available at armoryonpark.org. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Raging Prince and Simpering King: A Tale of Two Shakespeares

      by

      Livestreamed productions of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth” from London reflect the vital role directors have in redefining these classic characters.I’ve seen Hamlet cry. And pout. And waffle. And jest. And rave. But I haven’t seen Hamlet rage the way Cush Jumbo’s Hamlet does in a new production of Shakespeare’s tragedy at the Young Vic in London. It’s the kind of determinate rage that convincingly powers him through his revenge.Yet this production gets its spark from the politics of having a Black woman in the role, directing her anger at an injustice.What this “Hamlet” — and its fellow Shakespeare tragedy “Macbeth,” which is also onstage in London right now, at the Almeida Theater — reminds us of is the important role that a director can play in molding these central characters who are defined by their resolve, or lack thereof. Their choices may not only render a classic new again, but also make space for contemporary gender and racial politics.These plays, running in person and via livestream — which is how I saw them — show two different approaches to directing Shakespearean tragedies. Greg Hersov’s “Hamlet” has a compelling, well-defined protagonist inhabiting a not-quite polished production; while Yaël Farber’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is an appealing production with bland lead performances.Farber typically has a strong command of her stages; her productions are often dark, and hung with a polished, ornate melancholy. (Her gracefully haunting take on “Hamlet,” starring an electric Ruth Negga, felt stolen from the dreams of Edgar Allan Poe.) This “Macbeth” is bleak, spare and gritty. (Soutra Gilmour is the set designer.)The play opens with an overturned wheelbarrow full of soldiers’ boots and a man bathing in a bucket of blood. And yet it’s also delicate, with Tom Lane’s cello score (performed by Aoife Burke); and stately, with the three elder Weird Sisters (Diane Fletcher, Maureen Hibbert and Valerie Lilley) dressed in handsome gray suits that David Byrne would envy. (Joanna Scotcher designed the costumes.)Farber takes a political stance in her direction, making the war imagery brutal and heavy-handed. But the largest surprise, and slip-up, in this otherwise charismatically styled and beautifully filmed production is that the central couple, played by James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan, are rather conventional and unremarkably defined.James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan in Yaël Farber’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” at the Almeida Theater in London.Marc BrennerI say central couple, though Macbeth was never the most interesting part of the play; he is ambitious but irresolute. He must be goaded on by Lady Macbeth, one of the most fearsome, emasculating — and fascinating — women in English literature. Though undoubtedly a great performer with a gleam of Hollywood celebrity, Ronan feels miscast in the role. Even as a murderer, Ronan has a jejune, effervescent quality that’s at odds with the base evil of the character.Farber sometimes positions Lady Macbeth as a sexual figure, her body sprawled in bed or on the floor draped in gauzy cloth, and her legs wrapped around Macbeth’s waist in greeting. But Ronan and McArdle lack chemistry, and this Lady Macbeth is also presented as oddly virginal; Ronan, wearing a playful white-blond bob, and mostly white attire, is the brightest image in this gloomy production.This Lady Macbeth could also represent a certain dangerous white female power that comes at the expense of men and women of color; in one scene, Macduff’s wife (Akiya Henry) and children, who are all played by Black actors, are viciously murdered as Lady Macbeth guiltily stands to the side. It’s an overly violent scene, punctuated by Lady Macduff’s jagged screams, that drags on for an excruciatingly long time.As for McArdle, he gives a believably shocked and earnest portrayal of Macbeth, and, later in the production, manages to deliver a rabid version of the murderous Scottish king. But he bumbles through the steps in between. Ultimately, we’re left with a murderous couple that somehow manages to be forgettable.On the other hand, in Hersov’s “Hamlet,” the trappings of the production are less lively: The music and costumes have an early 1990s vibe, though the reason is unclear. The livestream is, impressively, very accessible. You can watch from various camera angles, and captions and British Sign Language are also provided. Still, the video and audio quality leaves more to be desired.Where Hersov does provides a decisive interpretation is in the melancholy prince — and his suicidal lover. This Hamlet is not the desperate, confused young man so many productions present, but a prince empowered by his feelings. Jumbo gives a fiery, vitriolic performance; this Hamlet’s grief passes through a sieve of righteous anger. His wit is barbed with sneers and eye rolls. Even his jokes are delivered with an acerbic bite.Norah Lopez Holden as Ophelia, with Jumbo as Hamlet, in the production that is streaming through Saturday.Helen MurrayThe decision at the heart of the play — “to be or not to be,” that famous meditation on living and dying — seems less of an open question in this production. Jumbo’s prince philosophizes almost for the sport of it; he always seems resolved to what he must do.Ophelia (Norah Lopez Holden), who so often is just a girlfriend tragically lost to hysterics, is here as clear and confident as Jumbo’s Hamlet. In her first scene, she seductively sways her hips while listening to music, and she fantasizes a sexy Latin dance with Hamlet before she’s jolted back to reality. She isn’t a receptacle of Hamlet’s desire, but a young woman with sexual agency and desires of her own. Holden’s Ophelia has attitude, telling off her elder brother for his hypocrisy and firing back at Hamlet when she’s had enough of his gibes and babble.And when she descends into madness, it does not seem like the insanity of a girl who’s heartbroken and grieving; it seems as much an act as Hamlet’s, and her suicide appears to be a rejection of the world she inhabits.For Ophelia to show such agency within the bounds of the character as written is quietly extraordinary. And to see a Black woman reframe Hamlet as confident and righteously enraged is a political take unusual for the play. Hersov’s “Hamlet” remakes its main man from the ground up. After all, what a piece of work is a man — or a Black woman — on a fresh stage.The Tragedy of MacbethThrough Nov. 27 (streaming through Saturday) at the Almeida Theater in London; almeida.co.uk.HamletThrough Nov. 13 (streaming through Saturday) at the Young Vic in London; youngvic.org. More