Eyewitness: Experiencing Hamlet completely fresh.

This comment from The Guardian is self-explanatory:

This is why, even with classical theatre, I'm trying to stay completely spoiler free.  Not too long ago I attended the theatre and ten minutes before the play was due to start, the audience member behind me began reading a full synopsis of the play she'd pulled from the web.  I sat with my fingers in my ears.

In the end I left the performance at the interval.  It was an awful production and I decided that I'd save the ending for a version I was enjoying.

For Schools: Hamlet screened the BFI.

On the Sceenplay's blog, John Wyver reports on the BFI screening of For Schools: Hamlet, the 1961 ITV series starring Barry Foster in the title role:

"Jennifer Daniel is a posh Ophelia who fails to convince in the ‘mad’ scene. As Gertrude Patricia Jessel, who had been a regular at the Stratford Memorial Theatre since 1944, has a rather remarkable neck, but she falls short in the ‘closet’ scene. The best of other players is probably Sydney Tafler as Claudius, another criminal role to add to the actor’s tally in British noir films of the previous decade."

This was thought lost for many years until a copy was found in the Library of Congress and returned to the BFI. For all John's reservations, let's hope an accessible edition (streaming perhaps since a home release seems unlikely) is made available soon.

Shakespeare and me in The Observer

Today's Observer has a special section, Shakespeare and Me in which various actors and directors talk about the plays have effected them. There's plenty of Hamlet interest.

Simon Russell Beale: "I think it was the actor Paul Rhys who said to me: "Hamlet will change you", and I didn't believe him. He was right, though – it's the only part you can't hide behind – and you spend most of the time contemplating your death, which is quite hard to do when you're 40, not yet ancient."

Judi Dench: "I made my professional debut as Ophelia in 1957. I didn't know enough to be daunted by it at the time. I learnt an incredible amount from it. My notices were certainly daunting. You learn from them – you learn very soon. You just have to grit your teeth and get on and learn to do it better."

Alan Cumming: "It probably wasn't a great idea to play Hamlet opposite my ex-wife [Hilary Lyon] as Ophelia. We were coming towards the end of our marriage and I pretty much had a full-on breakdown after it. The play also dredged up some awful things with my father, and I realised there were a lot of unresolved issues in my life that I needed to deal with."

Michelle Dockery: "Anyone who's ever played Ophelia should all get together for a big group hug. I played Ophelia with John Simm at Sheffield and I began to suffer terrible insomnia in the same way that Hamlet does. It's such a tough part and Ophelia is a huge leap, especially in the end, when she descends into her madness."

But the whole thing's a pleasure and all available here.

Eyewitness: Hamlet injured in duel.

You've probably already heard of this palpable hit, but just in case ...

Conor Madden -- who plays Hamlet in the Second Age Theatre production -- was duelling with Aonghus Og McAnally, who plays Laertes, when he was accidentally struck in the face with a round-tip sword.

The blade sliced open the flesh underneath his eye socket and the actor collapsed on the stage.

Initially, some in the audience thought the facial injury to Hamlet and the actor's moans were part of the production.

Given the ferocity with which some of the final duels can be played, it's surprising that there aren't more injuries. Thankfully Madden wasn't injured too severely and left hospital with a couple of stitches.

Eyewitnesses: When Jacobi Met Burton.

Derek Jacobi talks to The Observer on the occasion of his first Lear and offers this touching anecdote I've not heard before about meeting his childhood Hamlet, Richard Burton:

"it must have been 1977, I did a couple of days on a film with Burton and I reminded him of this schoolboy Hamlet and he said, very sweetly, that yes, he remembered. And he said, 'What are you doing now?' And I said, 'Well I'm about to play Hamlet at the Old Vic.' And he said, 'I'll come and see you.' And he did. And he came around afterwards and said, 'Do you want to go out for dinner?' And I said, yes, great, and as we were walking out of the dressing room, he said, 'Do you mind if we go and stand on the stage? I haven't stood on that stage for 25 years.' So we stood on the stage and I said, 'As a schoolboy, I sat up there and watched you playing Hamlet on this stage.'"

Sarah Blasko's new album.

On my other blog, I've reviewed the new album from Sarah Blasko, "As Day Follows Night" which was written whilst she was composing the incidental music for and appearing in the 2008 Bell Shakespeare production. She says of writing about the album concurrently:

“It was good to have something alongside the album writing that had a deadline because it made me slightly more disciplined. It was sort of like exercise that kept my energy up for the task of writing the album,” she says. “When I did the performances for Hamlet over two months last year, in between the time I was on stage, I would sit at the backstage piano and write my album songs.”

As I say in the review I can't detect any direct influences in the lyrics of the album, no scraps of Shakespearean verse, but since the play is steeped in a vast spectrum of human emotion, some crossover is probably inevitable.

Eyewitness: RSC, 1988

Mark Rylance has been interviewed by The Guardian about his life in theatre:

""When I played Hamlet," he remembers, "I added the word 'Ah!' five times after what are usually Hamlet's final words – 'The rest is silence.' And Ian McKellen sent me a letter to the stage door, saying, 'Now, now, darling, you really do have to be silent after those words.'" Sir Ian did not leave a return address, so Rylance was unable to write back to him and point out that the five dying susurrations are in the folio edition of the plays, printed seven years after the writer's death. Rylance believes that they were added in performance by Richard Burbage, the first Hamlet."

The Arden version of the folio has "O, O, O, O. Dies." But his point is made.

The modern equivalent of what he proposes are those printed editions of film scripts which are often transcripts of what occurred in the actual film rather than the screenplay even if an actor has paraphrased the words of the original writer and wrecked the sense.

But it does go to show that when you're playing this part, you don't have to just deal with the audience, there's also you're predecessors quietly judging you. Or not in McKellen's case.

Eyewitness: Shakespeare in the Park, New York City 2008

Matthew Carlson played the Danish Captain in this performance which starred Michael Stuhlbarg, featuring Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose as Ophelia and Sam Waterson's Polonius. On his blog, he describes one electric performance:

"The weather is always part of the performance when acting outdoors, but on one night in particular something remarkable happened. We found ourselves in a windstorm, which began slowly but became increasingly violent. At first the trees simply whispered in the wind, but as the night wore on they began to move and sway. Eventually, leaves and branches began to break from the trees and blow through the theater and across the stage. Now doing a play like Hamlet, which centers around a prince visited by the ghost of his murdered father, you can imagine that a windstorm like this might begin to take on a strangely supernatural feel. The weather began to affect the performance in subtle ways, as Michael incorporated the wind and allowed it to affect him."

Matthew also mentions that he shot Horatio at the end, which gives a whole new meaning to "Go, bid the solidiers shoot".