We'd Go Mad Too if We Were Involved with Him; Gord Rand is so Tortured, He's Terrific as Hamlet

hamlet
Necessary Angel
The National Post

Gord Rand's Hamlet doesn't merely contemplate suicide in "to be or not to be"; he also, which may be a first, has a crack at committing it. Halfway through the speech he puts a plastic bag on his head, fastens it with duct-tape, and awaits asphyxiation. He pulls out of course -- of the bag and the deed--and resumes soliloquizing. I think it would make more sense if he'd defied the rule against self-slaughter before saying "perchance to dream" instead of just after, but in all other respects he gets away with it. The speech has been re-positioned to show us Hamlet at his lowest ebb; it comes, in this production, just after he's mistakenly killed Polonius, been roughed up by the king and banished to England, and is only wearing underpants. And it looks as if he's had to be forced into putting those on, having spent some time daubing his naked body with his victim's blood. Most Hamlets show some passing remorse at having murdered the wrong man. Not this one.

As well as changing the running order, Necessary Angel's production has cut about half of the received text of Hamlet and made what remains as bleak and violent as possible. If that makes it sound cheap, it isn't. In its way it's as exciting and compelling as last year's landmark production at Stratford, though its way isn't as satisfying. It also doesn't quite square with the declared intention of its Scottish director, Graham McLaren, of giving his actors, and hence his audience, as much freedom as possible. Like such gifted British directors as Mike Alfreds and Jason Byrne, he doesn't impose blocking; the actors can wander off and on as the mood and the situation take them. But that freedom must be limited when exercised within a frame as rigid as the one McLaren has provided. The cuts and transpositions make a statement in themselves; so does the set (designed by the director), which is one room, containing a table strewn with the remains of a banquet at which the main drink seems to have been Coke, plus some cheap if versatile chairs. "Thrift, thrift, Horatio," says Hamlet of the rapid transition from his father's funeral to his mother's wedding, and he's so right. From the look of things, this royal family can't even afford help. Also, the show must have settled on a tone quite early on, since for months the press department has been sending out releases about how it's "seething with amorality." I'm not sure what that means, or why it's supposed to be such a good thing, and I don't think it's true of the characters, most of whom have moral codes, even if they transgress them. But it's probably reflected in the production's rule of behaviour, which seems to be:When in doubt, hit someone.

So, why's it good? It's good in the basic way that any Shakespeare production needs to be; with a creme-de-la- creme cast, it makes compelling sense of the words and forges strong and complex relationships through them. Besides this, it has an identity, consistent and inventive. Much is startling but little feels imposed, at least until the end. The Hamlet we know is four acts of cat-and-mouse plus one of mayhem, and you'd think this production's temper would best suit the latter, but it doesn't work out that way. That fifth act has a lot of plotting, indeed a lot of plot, and the show has to slow awkwardly down to accommodate it. Also, it has to cheat on its location convention, with Ophelia implausibly buried in the dining hall. The lack of a graveyard (alas, poor Yorick; he's gone, Horatio) hobbles Rand's Hamlet who's denied his new philosophic self, but still has to act as if it existed.

His is still a fine searching performance, from one of the least pin-downable actors I know: I always admire him and never recognize him. He must be well past his twenties, but he's still totally convincing as a lean teasing punk of a prince, intellectually mature, emotionally at ground zero. This version starts with the "solid flesh" soliloquy, and Rand explores every nihilistic nuance of it. Later, he suffers, teases and taunts. "I did love you once" he tells Tara Nicodemo's eager-to-please Ophelia, brutally; no wonder she goes mad. All right, maybe he is amoral. Benedict Campbell's Claudius isn't; he's a dangerous, haunted ruler who surprises himself in the prayer scene. Laura de Carteret's Gertrude catches the destructive balance between concerned mother and besotted wife; she dons a Marilyn Monroe wig and Claudius a gorilla mask to play adult (so to speak) games under the table. Eric Peterson's Polonius is short-breathed for Shakespeare, but still furnishes a highly original Polonius, a Peeping Tom sadist at home and an officious sycophant at court. Then there are Steven McCarthy's limping scholar Horatio, Christopher Morris's fire-breathing Laertes, Robert Persichini's self-pitying Ghost and orotund Player, and -- in the new portmanteau role of Guildencrantz (as opposed to Rosenstern) -- Gray Powell, who for once suggests a previous warm relationship with Hamlet that gets shattered on the rocks of Elsinore. Tom Stoppard would be proud of him.