Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Hamlet-the-character: regularly redefined

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet was playing in London while we were there recently. We had checked on tickets before we ever left home but tickets had sold out in an hour a full year before the play opened. There were 30 tickets made available for each performance when we were there – first come, first served – and people were sleeping overnight on the sidewalk in front of the theatre hoping to score. We weren't among them.

The production didn't get good reviews but Benedict got rave reviews for his portrayal of Hamlet.

However, we did see it in the end, in a movie theatre in downtown Halifax. This was a filmed version of the stage production. We had read all the negative reviews but we weren't deterred from seeing it. I'm glad; I was blown away by it.

Before it started and during intermission, you could see the audience going in and out, getting some wine and snacks, stretching their legs (it was over three hours!) etc. That was fun – it was a little like being there.

Benedict is a wonderful actor – and must be exhausted by the end of it. He plays Hamlet with great energy and bravado. It is one of the most-produced plays of all time and I'm sure I'm just the latest in a long long line of people to say that Hamlet-the-character is regularly redefined by the last actor to play him. Over the last few days, I've watched (thanks, YouTube!) some of the actors who have risen to the occasion and who've been acclaimed for their performances. I found them all so different from each other.

John Gielgud played Hamlet anguished; Richard Burton – determined and confident; Laurence Olivier – forlorn and sad; David Tennant – a little bewildered. Hamlet, it seems, is whoever the actor portraying him decides he is.

After the curtain call at the theatre in London, Benedict always stepped forward and talked to the audience about the refugee crisis in Europe. He asked the audience for donations to help the refugees and by the end of the run, he had raised a lot of money for the cause. He spoke to us in the movie theatres after his performance also and was eloquent in his plea for people to help in this humanitarian emergency. He quoted an excerpt from the poem Home by Warsan Shire.

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land. . .



You can read the rest here.

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