From now until September 1, Shakespeare’s longest and most complex play is being mounted on the open-air stage at Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park.
To use an expression, it’s not your grandfather’s or grandmother’s Hamlet. If they saw it, they would probably tell you so.
But in its bold ambition and execution, it could be . . . and maybe should be not just their Hamlet, but your parents’, your own, and even your grandchildren’s. For Director Jessica Carmichael has boldly cut, scratched and re-mixed this complex work into an absorbing and kinetic action movie etched in sharp relief against a universal backdrop of generational grief, love and loss.
This stripped-down, essentialist version of Hamlet really moves . . . and, in the process, moves us. It’s a neat trick: telling a simpler, smaller, more straightforward human story – while at the same time opening a vast, primal portal to universal forces and rhythms.
That portal opens immediately in the spectacular opening scene. To avoid spoilers, all I will say is that the unexpected abounds, and James Dallas Smith brings an almost unbearable gravitas to the role of the ghost of dead King Hamlet, who launches the main plot by charging his son to avenge his murder. With the surprises and the dynamic staging, the play feels unfamiliar and freshly vital – like some emotional otherworld has stabbed through the High Park evening sky. And that wound will not be permitted to close: the dead King will insistently, rhythmically reappear and reiterate his warnings.
In the same vein, the broader production refuses to be contained within the strip of dirt fringing the formal stage. The actors slip repeatedly from the stage onto and through that dirt – and a critical scene even plays out in the space between that fringe and the audience. And these characters fly into, through and around the audience space – and at times, for just a moment, even see individual audience members. They look them in the eye, ask a question with a smile . . . then are pulled back into the streamlined world of the play.
While the production taps this primal vitality that cracks the bonds of stage, time and space, the core story is telescoped through surgical cuts to the text (for instance, skip this production if you’re a Fortinbras fan, because the Norwegian prince is gone!), as well as the strategic additions of new lines and transferring of other lines among characters. Driving the changes are powerful clarifications of the play’s key roles, which are executed by a brilliant cast and some inspired staging.
Bright-eyed, witty and intense, Qasim Khan’s Hamlet is our grieving but action-oriented Prince. Spit from a ragged maw of loss, he flits and races: up, down and around, and right off of the multi-level stage. He connects with those around him, whether they are soldiers, players, friends or even audience members. And he assesses, decides, and acts – with almost no dithering or delay – thanks to the pruning of the script and dynamism in Carmichael’s staging (as one simple example, she omits his lurking presence from Claudius’ prayer scene). And to impose his clarity on his surroundings, Hamlet even repeats certain lines multiple times — like a turntablist moving a record back and forth beneath the needle.
In a striking change, Beck Lloyd’s Ophelia is the first to speak in this remixed Hamlet. In her opening address, she circles the stage while delivering poetry and song that set up the themes of grief and love. Then she is present for most of the events of the first half of the play – even becoming the on-stage receiver of one of Hamlet’s most famous soliloquies. The changes turn her from a female cypher – shunted on and off the stage for brief appearances, and more projected upon than projecting – into a full partner to Hamlet. (Read SesayArts interview with Lloyd about her portrayal of Ophelia here.)
In this story, Hamlet and Ophelia seem to share a genuine and deep love, though that love will prove inadequate to salve their individual and parallel woes. Each is shattered by the murder of a parent, and challenged by the direct role played by a loved one in the murder. Plunged into grief and asked to move on, each is compelled to action – with different but deadly results. This repetition-with-difference is the straightforward thing wherein we catch the thematic freight of the play.
Equally transformed is the role of Horatio, Hamlet’s loyal confidante. Hamlet famously tells him, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. But this Horatio, brought to hand-wringing emo life by a hyper-energetic Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, needs no such lesson. Not straitjacketed by rationality or religion, he is a deeply sensitive, emotive avatar moved to the first of many paroxysms of emotion by the ghost at the start of the play. The last to leave many scenes, he observes all and empathizes keenly with both Hamlet and Ophelia.
In his guise of observer and commentator, he explicitly underlines the repetitions within and beyond the tale we are watching. For the loss and rupture of romantic and filial love — and the need to grieve and grow — are universal phenomena that define life itself. And with this in mind, Horatio delivers the play’s final line (exquisitely relocated from a Hamlet speech), which serves as the thunderous mike drop bringing the whole production home.
The splendid – and splendidly diverse – cast at once lean into the specificity of their roles in this streamlined story and tap the deeper veins of universality. An archetypally villainous Claudius, Diego Matamoros is a cool, calculating, and only minimally conflicted businessman. Raquel Duffy’s Gertrude displays flashes of vulnerability and a growing self-awareness in the tug-of-war between him and Hamlet. If a little long-winded, Sam Khalilieh’s Polonius is spritely, industrious and well-meaning – so that, like Ophelia and Laertes, we, too, feel his loss. Dan Mousseau’s Laertes is a fast-talking, quick-acting action hero foil (with a foil) for Hamlet. And Amelia Sargisson and Christo Graham’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel like genuine friends of Hamlet: silly but sincere, and overmatched by events and machinations. Finally, the script and direction open up space for the two most minor characters – the soldiers who first see the ghost — to become memorable: Prince Amponsah’s Barnardo is a strikingly stoic and capable figure balanced by Breton Lalama’s sardonic, spear-wielding Marcellus.
The inevitable end of this essential, stripped-down Hamlet feels like we’ve stepped into Reservoir Dogs – a bloody, frenzied apotheosis that leaves bodies artfully strewn across the stage space, while the raw and primal energies accessed have long-since slipped its bonds.
It’s an action movie remix powered by an engine of grief. And it runs hot. So it’s definitely not your grandparents’ Hamlet. But it could and maybe should be.
Take the whole family.
Hamlet continues until September 1, 2024. Backstage tours of the High Park Amphitheatre are offered at 6:30 pm prior to Tuesday evening performances of Hamlet starting July 30th. Tours are open to ticketholders of that evening’s performance. Reserve tickets on canadianstage.com.
© Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 2024
