A NEW AGE FOR HAMLET
Brooding prince plots revenge; disaster ensues. That’s the core of Hamlet, among Shakespeare’s most enduring and frequently performed tragedies. Considered one of the most challenging roles in Western theatre, the lead is a bucket-list item for more actors than will ever get to play it. But what happens when Hamlet is played by an actor who is older than anyone else in the cast? That’s what happened in 2021 when Sean Mathias cast Ian McKellen as the tragic Prince of Denmark for his West End production at Theatre Royal Windsor. You’ve heard of gender-blind and color-blind casting? Sadly used more as a stunt, it’s when the best actor for the role is hired regardless of the script’s requirements. This is age-blind casting, with the venerable actor tackling the role for the second time (the first was over 50 years ago in 1971). Now, Mathias has taken his production — pared down to two hours — and filmed it in every nook and cranny of the same theater; the gorgeous, Edwardian-era Windsor is now Elsinore. Still screening in UK cinemas (check HERE for locations), Hamlet will be available on DVD, Blu-ray & Digital Download from April 8, 2024.
Does McKellen — now 84 — bring insight to a Hamlet who is decades older than his own mother? Viewers have to make an enormous leap of faith to believe that he’s home from college, that he has an extant mother or uncle, or that he harbors any of the psychological problems that might bedevil a young man, but there is much to enjoy if they do. Opera lovers make a similar leap watching portly middle-aged matrons sing Madame Butterfly or Tosca, whose tragic heroines are presumably 15 or 16 years old. McKellen is an accomplished, adroit actor with a daunting command of Shakespeare’s ornate language. His castmates — Jonathan Hyde, Jenny Seagrove, Steven Berkoff, Francesca Annis, and Frances Barber — are similarly endowed. Watching the master at the height of his dramatic powers is a cinematic joy which should be seen on the big screen.
In the story — as originally written — Prince Hamlet is a college kid who comes home to Denmark from university to find that his uncle Claudius has murdered Hamlet’s father, usurped the throne, and married Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Wracked with self-doubt, Hamlet works up an elaborate ruse to expose Claudius, but everything that can go wrong does go wrong, including the suicide of Ophelia, Hamlet’s unstable would-be girlfriend, the not-so-accidental death of the obsequious courtier Polonius, and ultimately, a mutually fatal sword fight between Hamlet and his best friend Laertes. Not a happy outcome.
For a reviewer who’s seen at least 17 different stage productions of this classic, “college kid” is a fact that has already been ignored by innumerable actors and directors in their quest to mine something yet undiscovered in the timeless tale. Mathias goes one step further here than color- gender- and age-blind casting. This modern-dress treatment is set during the COVID shutdown of 2020 and opens with the funeral of Hamlet Sr. with an apparently heartfelt but insincere formal speech by Claudius. The guards of Castle Elsinore deliver their news of having seen the gender-bent ghost of his father to the prince at his shabby apartment. The oppressive mood alludes to Blade Runner, and changes little throughout the tale, apart from the gravedigger scene and Hamlet’s recruiting of a band of itinerant actors to put on a play (done partly as a modern dance performance) that will disturb Claudius and reveal his crime — the only two bits of comic relief that the playwright built into the script.
Dramatic pacing and film editing are excellent, as are set design and cinematography. Apart from an excess of close-ups and too much moving-camera technique, this eternal story of despicable skullduggery, palace intrigue, and vengeance gone awry, is compellingly depicted. Shakespeare fans will certainly make the leap and relish this malevolent celebration of ornate language and psychological torment. Hamlet is beautifully done.
The screening will include a recorded Q&A with McKellen and Mathias. The film is produced by Bill Kenwright, who passed last October.
images courtesy of Kaleidoscope Entertainment
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.