Good Night, Sweet Prince...
Watched the film of the David Tennant version of Hamlet this evening with maaseru and Pim.
What a show. Keep in mind that I adore Shakespeare with a passionate passion, and Hamlet is my favourite of his plays. I've seen a lot of Hamlets, from the embarrassingly terrible to the brilliant.
I'd heard Tennant's performance was good, and I'd also heard it was over the top - that Tennant starts on such a note of hysteria, or madness, that he left nowhere to go for the emotions to escalate.
It must have been someone who really liked understated performances who said that, since I thought Tennant was just about perfect. I'm not saying he was the best of all Hamlets, or that there could be a definitive Hamlet, or that I haven't seen other great versions: I am saying that I found Tennant to be expressive, interesting, sympathetic, dynamic and utterly natural in the role.
A few specific comments:
- Hamlet should be the most powerful and charismatic person in the play; and Tennant was such. But Patrick Stewart as Claudius was also powerful, and unusually sympathetic. They made an excellent team.
- Penny Downie was excellent as Gertrude, and I loved her costuming.
- Loved the motif of mirrors and broken mirrors. There's a scene where Horatio is talking to Hamlet, and we can see bits of both of them in the shards. This also really highlighted all the mirror imagery in the play, which I hadn't thought about much before.
- Also loved the moment where Hamlet says to Gertrude "I will hold a mirror up to you" and he holds the palm of his hand.
- It was an easy Hamlet to understand. What you see is what you get. The meanings were clear.
- Most of the actors delivered their lines beautifully and naturally. I thought Edward Bennett was the only one who didn't sound right; his acting was passable, but his delivery of lines was stiff.
- Mariah Gale as Ophelia was fine, but they didn't do anything special with her. Just a straightforward interpretation of what Shakespeare gave us.
- At the end, Gertrude drinks the poison quite knowingly - unable to live with her new knowledge that her husband killed her husband and is killing Hamlet. Then Claudius, fatalistic, accepts his own death and drinks the poison. I loved this.
- There were other places, especially in the duel at the end, where the action was made to enhance the lines and give them new meaning. I loved that.
- The gravedigger was amusing, but not as punchy as he might be. Hamlet, on the other hand, was very moving in the scene with Yorick's skull. There were other moments of the play that become much more moving and emotive than I have seen them before, thanks to Tennant's performance.
- To be or not to be.
- Interesting decor; a sort of minimalist mix of art deco and Baroque.
- Definitely want to see it again.