HAMLET - THE ACTORS' CUT. To 21 October.
Pitlochry
HAMLET - THE ACTORS’ CUT
by William Shakespeare
Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 21 October 2006
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 26 Sept, 11 Oct 2pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 01796 484626
www.pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 August
Bad Quarto makes good theatre.
Someone could have a job for life working out what’s happened to Hamlet. With different editions published during and after Shakespeare’s life, and modern editions playing with combinations of these, it’s impossible to say what audiences heard back in the early 1600s. Pitlochry take the least authentic edition, commonly called the ‘Bad Quarto’, here re-named “The Actors’ Cut”.
“Cut” it certainly is; this is almost Hamlet without the Prince. Missing are much of his soliloquies which import the complexities of a noble mind possibly o’erthrown. If, as director John Durnin suggests, a group of actors put this script together from memory, it’s a warning against letting actors ‘do’ the writing.
Compared with the known script, this is the kind of thing that might happen when actors running the play during rehearsals, without scripts but not yet knowing their parts fully, instructed to keep going whatever. Familiar speeches occur, whole or, more often, in fragments, veering off into language that keeps the story going but misses subtlety and richness of expression. “To be or not to be,” says Hamlet, “ay, that’s the point”.
But the story charges forward with clarity. Gertred here clearly doesn’t know about her second husband’s murder of her first, something Jacqueline Dutoit catches with a surprised flick of the eyelids in his direction when she eventually hears the evidence. (Dutoit’s wheelchair-bound from an early-season accident, something appropriate for this character carried by the flow of events).
Durnin’s right to strip the stage bare, making a black surround with the idea of theatricality ever-present. The cast plays as an ensemble, mostly seated round the stage when not in character. Modern dress accentuates Hamlet's political world, and the contrast between Jonathan Coote’s King in neat civil suit and his Ghost of Hamlet’s Father in military camouflage (they’re differentiated also by the King’s smoothly clean-shaven appearance and the Ghost’s beard).
Anthony Glennon’s Hamlet adopts the soldierly dress less for any noticeable military inclination than to associate himself with his father. Glennon is focus for a Pitlochry company strong in male actors, all working at peak form, with Coote’s King outstanding.
Anthony Glennon
King: Jonathan Coote
Gertred: Jacqueline Dutoit
Horatio: Jonathan Dryden Taylor
Corambis: Martyn James
Laertes: Richard Galazka
Ofelia: Michele Gallagher
Rossencraft: Ronnie Simon
Gilderstone: Darrell Brockis
Director: John Durnin
Lighting: Ace McCarron
Sound: Ronnie McConnell
Fight director: Raymond Short
2006-09-06 00:16:03