LESLEY FINLAY enjoyed a unique, double helping of Hamlet last month: one performed by primary school pupils, the other by a tight-knit cast at The Rose Bankside. She reviews the experience…
To The Rose, Bankside: where the power of Hamlet to draw crowds is demonstrated in the sell-out run at this tiny, ancient and atmospheric theatre.
I had watched a version of the play that afternoon– performed by 20 or so enthusiastic junior pupils from Leeds and Broomfield School, a tiny primary in Kent, who told the story faithfully using words, some energetic acting and narration, with particular focus on the soldiers and the ghost.
In London, the relationships were ‘the thing’ – the stifling, intense and complicated bonds that make this the king of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
A transistor – old, detached – crackles with weird, high-pitched messages as Claudius and Gertrude sit, as if writing their PR message, setting the scene of their marriage following the death of the King. The first surprise is that Hamlet (Jonathan Broadbent) is sitting among us; using the audience as co-conspirators, as counsellor and friends throughout.
Broadbent is a geeky student, a bit gauche, small in stature, a physical and mental contrast to the controlled, inscrutable Claudius.
Director Martin Parr’s 90-minute production is all about the bonds of mother, stepfather, son, girlfriend; the conflict between old and young; the pressures of growing up. Some excellent devices are used: the King is a disembodied Simon Russell Beale’s voice, whose authoritative call from beyond the grave emits from the transistor; the use of torches and the dramatic revealing of the cavernous original theatre (hidden until after Polonius’s death) which makes a ghostly graveyard and early grave for Ophelia.
The tight-knit cast of four worked well and doubled up with ease. Suzanne Marie was a convincing Gertrude, keeping up appearances, while her Ophelia was played with passivity and anguish.
Liam McKenna managed Claudius and Polonius well; while James Sheasby did well in his triple roles of Laertes, Rosencrantz and the gravedigger.
And so to our Hamlet: he told his story well and convinced this appreciative audience that he was an honest lad, possibly with a self-indulgent view of the world.
This was a story well told; to the point I did not notice until the very end the absence of Horatio, just one of the characters in the primary version who had shone just four hours earlier on the stage of Leeds village hall.