The Guardian
Monday, May 10, 20—
Theatre Review
by Threepwood Gallimaufry
Hamlet
Theydon Bois Thespians
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
To the weary, stale, flat spirits among us, director Humpty Fingerhood’s production of Hamlet on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s main stage might seem the quintessence of dull. Indeed, the breathless incompetence of this uncut, four-hour performance of Shakespeare’s longest play drove many less-enlightened audience members into the public houses of Stratford as early as Act One. However, those of us blessed with greater discernment soon divined Mr. Fingerhold’s darker purpose in filling the stage with such excruciating tedium.
For like Steiner, Stanislavski, or Meisner before him, this outrageously gifted director has created his own school of acting. The Fingerhand Technique, if I may coin the phrase, is drama for our time, of our time; nothing less than an anti-intellectual haddock slapped into the sweaty faces of those purists of the theatrical world who worship the false gods of Quality and Adequacy.
Starting with the amusing fiction that we are witnessing a suburban amateur theater company (the risibly named Theydon Bois Thespians), the entire tragedy is a constant barrage of boredom and banality. Brechtian touches abound, such as actors frequently forgetting their parts, audible prompts from the wings, and the constant display on the stage of the text itself, a truly stunning example of post-modern self-referentialism. When lines are remembered, there is no attempt to convey the meaning or poetry of the words—indeed, it is the triumph of Mr. Fingerhole’s Method that his well-schooled troupe succeed with breathtaking credibility at suppressing any indication that they understand the first thing about the play. He has clearly scoured the nation’s drama schools and repertory companies to find actors skilled enough to appear so convincingly clueless.
(Alas, it behooves this critic to single out veteran performer Timothy Mullard, who demonstrated considerable presence and intelligence in his diverse and colorful triple-turn as Polonius, the Gravedigger, and Osric, utterly betraying the artistic vision of his director. Mr. Fingerhoop should consider recasting these parts with a trio of actors who are better at masking the slightest hint of talent.)
But to quote Derrida, as you often find me doing, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” For just as we stagger to the end of this monotonous presentation, the director drops his bombshell, confirming one’s faith in one’s prized perspicacity.
Since you, dear reader, were not sufficiently prescient to obtain tickets to this necessarily one-time offering—we privileged few will dine out on our fortune for many a year to come—I feel I can describe the production’s last-minute surprise without hearing your distant, green-eyed cries of “Spoiler!”
We have reached the final tableau. The duel between Hamlet and Laertes commences with swordplay of an incompetence that approaches genius, and the histrionic deaths of the main characters follow in sequence—well done, Claudius, for a full minute of convulsions on the banquet table.
The doomed Hamlet, expiring in Horatio’s arms, hears the approach of Fortinbras (excellent sound effects from above the stage), and as he speaks his last words—“the rest is silence,” as we all well know, or should—snow begins to fall inside the castle, turning to rain, the significance of which I don’t need to explain, I’m sure.
Ah, but the rest is far from silent. There is a piercing shriek, and a woman is lowered head-first from the top of the stage—a barely-clad wench, dirty, ragged and soaking wet, hanging by her ankle from a long rope. She swings wildly, screeching and cursing and waving her free leg around in such a display of “country matters” that we must conclude she is no angel winging the sweet prince to his rest, but none other than the vexed and tormented spirit of the drowned Ophelia. And one—well, this one—instantly comprehends the excruciating monotony of the production: to lull us into a state of complete habituation, so this shattering coup de theatre has its greatest possible impact.
Meanwhile, the actors below attempt to go on with the scene in the continuing heavy downpour, on a stage that is now rapidly filling up with soapsuds, an obvious nod to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. When Horatio slips and disappears beneath a cloud of froth, unable to continue, a heavily bearded Scotsman leaps onto the stage from the front row of the audience and picks up the speech “So shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgments, casual slaughters…” but seeming to forget the lines, switches to “It is a tale told by an idiot,” thus confirming what I had instantly intuited, that he is meant to represent that other tragic hero, Macbeth. An enormously tall black man, no doubt portraying Othello, also rises from the front row and attempts to drag Macbeth off the stage again. Oh, the significance!
In the chaos of a deepening sea of foam—Tzara! Beckett!—Macbeth accidentally collides with another character (I think it was Osric), which mystifyingly strips him of his wig and false beard. The denuded Macbeth falls off the stage into the lap of an older man in the audience. (Lear? I regret that I remember little of this performer’s appearance.) (Editor’s note. See story on page 1 “Anonymous blogger proves scab driver death a hoax. Government resigns. Who is UTooth?” Also pages 2, 3, 4 and 17.)
At this point, a sudden horde of actors in police uniforms—a clear homage aux Les Keystone Kops—rush in through the auditorium, many of them joining the melee on the stage. It is, naturally, the final key to Mr. Fingerfook’s conception of the play: Hamlet is completely sane; it is the rest of the cast who are mad. Like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the entire play takes place in a madhouse. Only while Hamlet lived could the lunacy be held in check.
And we, the theater audiences of today, are now revealed as no better than those middle-class doctor-peepers of yesteryear who sought their entertainment in touring the bedlams of England. As we are herded from the auditorium, our ears and cheeks now aglow with much-deserved shame, as we walk voyeuristically past the young couple kissing passionately in the foyer (I’d seen the same actor at a local comedy club, doing a stunningly Fingerhoodian portrayal of a second-rate stand-up comic), and as we are patted down with delicious intimacy in the evening air by young men dressed as policemen, who pretend to take our names and addresses (call me, Trey), we feel duly and deliciously abased. Positively degraded, in fact.
Thank you for that, Hymfrey Fingerhook—genius.