Tennantmas Hamlet
Finally found time to watch this. I wasn't going to cut it, but it turned out longish...
Anyway. At first I was really annoyed by the surveillance camera motif but by Act Two I decided that I liked it as a metaphor, although I'm not sure you NEED metaphorical surveillance in a play in which people spying on each other is a recurring plot point. So actually, maybe I'm still torn on it, except to say that I found Hamlet tearing the camera off the wall and smashing it to be very emotionally satisfying.
Likewise, the mirrors being surveillance glass was a nice modern touch, and though I think they should have stayed away from the cliche of 'broken mirrors', the glass being broken during Polonius' death and then staying that way shows technical proficiency in understanding the material. Which is kind of a bullshit thing to say because this is the RSC and not any local performance of Hamlet I've ever sat through, but hey.
The sets were quite lovely with all that funeral dark marble, though it made it jarring when we finally left the interior set scenes for the ACTUAL funeral which was a location shoot. It felt wrong to suddenly be among real muck.
Performances: uniformly pretty good, as you would expect. Some really great performances from the supporting cast - loved Polonius, Horatio, and the Player King - who reminded me strongly of the guy who played Lear on Slings and Arrows. Of lead cast, I liked Stewart best, actually, his Claudius was hard to suspect as a murderer. He seemed more like your Uncle the professor at the local college whom you don't know all that well. They accentuated this with the neat beard and the rounded scholarly glasses, and the sweater-y lines to his tux.
Mariah Gale, very solid as Ophelia. Weren't there people who thought she wasn't as good in the mad scenes? I thought she was very respectable in the crazy Ophelia moments, but I didn't buy her in her scene with Hamlet, which... sucks, to say the least. I just didn't think she and Tennant had chemistry to make you buy it. Which is a problem I had with Tennant in general in this play.
I don't think I have anything to say about Penny Downie's Gertrude either. The direction on this seemed to have been a classic down the middle interpretation and I only think Gertrude is really very interesting if the director decides to do something cuh-razy with the material. So she was good, I enjoyed her, nothing to say about it in particular. Oh, well, I guess I thought she didn't milk as much out of her death as she could have done, and I wasn't clear if she drank it on purpose or not which makes this a 'Gertrude dies accidentally' production.
Tennant was a very funny Hamlet, sarcastic in all the right places, which I think in general is an underestimated quality in the role. It's Shakespeare, so for all the dourness I think there are a number of really funny jokes in this. My problem was that I didn't feel like he connected very well with the other characters in scenes that were NOT funny, and sometimes even IN scenes that were funny I didn't feel it. (Especially the bit where Hamlet gets all up in Ophelia's lap, which is my favorite, and since I didn't think they had 'it' it just happened for me like so much whatever. I was bummed.)
In the end, I kind of wish that it was a little more like the cafe scene in 'End of Time', in which there's a really good bit where Tennant does that 'laughing because that's all I have left' mood, and I'm just not sure we ever got to the bottom of that with his Hamlet on film. It was probably better live?
In conclusion: I enjoyed watching it, didn't pause it to pee break or anything so it moved at a good pace and kept me involved. I think I like the modern dress Hamlet in 'Slings and Arrows' a little better? I hope no one from the RSC reads this and is insulted by that, because c'mon, 'Slings and Arrows' is a tough act to follow.
Anyway. At first I was really annoyed by the surveillance camera motif but by Act Two I decided that I liked it as a metaphor, although I'm not sure you NEED metaphorical surveillance in a play in which people spying on each other is a recurring plot point. So actually, maybe I'm still torn on it, except to say that I found Hamlet tearing the camera off the wall and smashing it to be very emotionally satisfying.
Likewise, the mirrors being surveillance glass was a nice modern touch, and though I think they should have stayed away from the cliche of 'broken mirrors', the glass being broken during Polonius' death and then staying that way shows technical proficiency in understanding the material. Which is kind of a bullshit thing to say because this is the RSC and not any local performance of Hamlet I've ever sat through, but hey.
The sets were quite lovely with all that funeral dark marble, though it made it jarring when we finally left the interior set scenes for the ACTUAL funeral which was a location shoot. It felt wrong to suddenly be among real muck.
Performances: uniformly pretty good, as you would expect. Some really great performances from the supporting cast - loved Polonius, Horatio, and the Player King - who reminded me strongly of the guy who played Lear on Slings and Arrows. Of lead cast, I liked Stewart best, actually, his Claudius was hard to suspect as a murderer. He seemed more like your Uncle the professor at the local college whom you don't know all that well. They accentuated this with the neat beard and the rounded scholarly glasses, and the sweater-y lines to his tux.
Mariah Gale, very solid as Ophelia. Weren't there people who thought she wasn't as good in the mad scenes? I thought she was very respectable in the crazy Ophelia moments, but I didn't buy her in her scene with Hamlet, which... sucks, to say the least. I just didn't think she and Tennant had chemistry to make you buy it. Which is a problem I had with Tennant in general in this play.
I don't think I have anything to say about Penny Downie's Gertrude either. The direction on this seemed to have been a classic down the middle interpretation and I only think Gertrude is really very interesting if the director decides to do something cuh-razy with the material. So she was good, I enjoyed her, nothing to say about it in particular. Oh, well, I guess I thought she didn't milk as much out of her death as she could have done, and I wasn't clear if she drank it on purpose or not which makes this a 'Gertrude dies accidentally' production.
Tennant was a very funny Hamlet, sarcastic in all the right places, which I think in general is an underestimated quality in the role. It's Shakespeare, so for all the dourness I think there are a number of really funny jokes in this. My problem was that I didn't feel like he connected very well with the other characters in scenes that were NOT funny, and sometimes even IN scenes that were funny I didn't feel it. (Especially the bit where Hamlet gets all up in Ophelia's lap, which is my favorite, and since I didn't think they had 'it' it just happened for me like so much whatever. I was bummed.)
In the end, I kind of wish that it was a little more like the cafe scene in 'End of Time', in which there's a really good bit where Tennant does that 'laughing because that's all I have left' mood, and I'm just not sure we ever got to the bottom of that with his Hamlet on film. It was probably better live?
In conclusion: I enjoyed watching it, didn't pause it to pee break or anything so it moved at a good pace and kept me involved. I think I like the modern dress Hamlet in 'Slings and Arrows' a little better? I hope no one from the RSC reads this and is insulted by that, because c'mon, 'Slings and Arrows' is a tough act to follow.