it turns out hamlet is a pretty good play

Hamlet is the most famous play in the English-speaking world, right? If we take Shakespeare as the most famous playwright (which we probably do), it’s a toss up between Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. But I think I’d come down on the side of the Dane. If you’ve ever sat through a production (or read it I suppose1), there are lines in there that in there that are so famous, famous doesn’t even do it justice. To be or not to be etc. And then there are those that are so ubiquitous to our language that we forget they’re even Shakespeare. Brevity is the soul of wit2 and all that.

Now I decided in Year 12/11th Grade/Première/my first year at AC3 when we were reading Macbeth that I would also read Hamlet. Because - I don’t know. I was4 annoying? And I decided then and there that Macbeth was far superior to Hamlet and that Hamlet was stupid. And the fact that Hamlet was the most famous play was also stupid. AND the fact that I was the only person who could see Hamlet for what it was - a stupid play about a whiny boy - made me Very Very Clever. Ah to be 17. One must develop and cling to silly opinions. I suppose it is then a little embarrassing that it took 15 years for me to loosen my grip on this particular opinion which has really - as a Shakespeare nerd - become a rather defining Personality Trait.

Ask me what my favourite Shakespeare is. Please please please. In a room full of theatre people the question comes up alarmingly often, even considering that a group of actors together become an insufferable group of navel gazing flamingoes. I am one of said flamingoes. So if you were to ask me (which I notice you haven’t but I am going to pretend that you did), I would say it’s probably between Macbeth and Twelfth Night. But if you want my favourite speech, then it’s Lady Percy from Henry 4.25

I would obviously then ask you yours and WOE BETIDE YOU if in answer to my question, you said “Hamlet”. Incredible for me because then I could launch into all the reasons he’s a tiny baby manchild who’s monumentally uninteresting and how all the women in the play are pathetic and not like any women I’ve ever met. Oh you don’t have a soapbox? Don’t worry. I always bring my own. It folds which makes it easy to carry around.

Cut to:

On Tuesday night, I sat in a dark theatre in Brooklyn and watched the National’s most recent production. And, dear reader, it fucking broke me.

I wanted to go and see it after watching an interview with the actor playing Hamlet, Hiran Abeysekera6, talking about the “to be or not to be” speech as a revolutionary tool. I’ve been thinking about revolution a lot recently (for no reason whatsoever) and I was intrigued because I don’t know if I had ever seen the speech described in that way. It was an itch that lodged itself in my brain. I’ve always seen that speech as so extraneous to the story and so self-indulgent. To see it be given active purpose was refreshing. And I don’t know about you but I am in need of being refreshed.

I understand intellectually that Hamlet is about revolution but I’d never seen it on stage portrayed in a way that captivated me. And captivated I was. There were so many brilliant moments in and aspects to this production but I am going to focus on three.

Hamlet

A pretty large aspect of the show as a whole so this doesn’t necessarily cover it all but I’ll try. Hamlet - our eponymous hero -7 is the whole reason I’d never liked the play. But Abeysekera’s portrayal didn’t just change my mind, it forced me to think about WHY I’d discarded Hamlet in the first place. Here is a privileged, slightly egotistical boy encountering grief and tragedy for the first time - that’s where we meet him, at his mother’s wedding shortly after his father’s funeral. A bummer to be sure. I was struck by the performer’s irreverence and comedy. I really could fully see him for the first time: the logic, the pathos, the tragic timing from ghost encounter to trying to fulfil an impossible task. Instead of a moping manchild as previously described, I saw a playful, funny, somewhat shallow individual reeling from being very suddenly dealt an incredible cruel hand. Failing over and over to do what his father asks of him from beyond the grave, he slowly loses everyone and everything (except Horatio, what a dude what a great friend), including his sanity.

In this version of the play, we got to Act Five and I hadn’t yet heard to be or not to be, which because I am a nerd I know is in Act Three. I had been watching so intensely, I thought there was no way that I missed it right. I couldn’t have. That would be crazy. And then there it was. They had moved the speech until after Ophelia’s funeral. And I got it. I understood. She has died, and he has sacrificed everything in the pursuit of this goal. He’s so close and he’s having to reckon with the fact that he’s ruined so much.

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”

Dear reader, I wept. For Hamlet. 17 year old me would never believe it.

Stagecraft

There was a moment in this production that made me GASP OUT LOUD. The design of the show is modern so everyone has guns instead of swords. It’s established (hilariously so) at the beginning that Hamlet is not good with guns. Nor does he like them. When he almost kills Claudius in the chapel, he first makes a gun with his hand before summoning the courage to get out an actual gun. He then ultimately chickens out and doesn’t kill him then.

When he comes into Gertrude’s chamber, he’s back to gesturing, there is no real gun. He’s mad, he’s angry, but no gun. However, she acts terrified. When Hamlet hears Polonius, mistakes him for Claudius, and shoots him, we hear actual gunshots. In a moment of brilliant dark comedy, Hamlet turns out to the audience with a face that goes “wtf I am not holding an actual gun that was weird”. He then laughs because he hasn’t actually shot anyone. Out comes Polonius who opens his shirt and blood seeps everywhere. In a slight of hand, when our attention turns back to Hamlet, he is now holding a real gun. And you realise he did shoot him. It was a real gun the whole time and you were pulled into his madness with him.

A picture is worth a thousand words so I am not sure how well I explained that but it was one of the most brilliant moments I have ever seen staged. I almost forgot to watch the rest of the scene because my brain was so stuck in that moment. To be honest, I might still be watching that moment now.

HUMANS ARE SO CREATIVE AND AMAZING AND INSANE. Because what do you MEAN that Hamlet has been around for four hundred years and a new production can bring a brilliant moment like that to life and make me understand a character in a completely new way?

Rude, honestly. I’m still not over it.

Family

Specifically Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes. A family unit that I didn’t really give much weight too. The more fool I. Obviously I have not seen all the productions of Hamlet in the world, so this may not be new to you but it was new to me. The relationships between this father and his children was so beautiful. This made the whole play for me. From the outset, Laertes and Ophelia have this beautiful and wildly relatable sibling dynamic. It’s funny and they clearly care about each other so much. But also treat each other like they’re idiots. As siblings should. Polonius enters for his whole “to thine own self be true” and their dynamic is unmatched. They treat their somewhat bumbling father with humour but also reverence and love. Laertes and Ophelia compete to finish the phrases they’ve clearly heard a thousand times8. It was beautiful. And brilliant. It set Ophelia up as precocious and fun (a real feat because I usually find her wistful [derogatory] and dull). Laertes emerges as a true hero over the course of the story and is set up against Hamlet as someone spurred to action by his grief. Although, this makes him heartbreakingly easy to manipulate which Claudius does. He’s not an idiot. So often Laertes seems like a bumbling buffoon; here, he was a man deeply committed to his family.

The moment of Ophelia’s madness was so active and so believable. Her beautiful family had been stripped from her. She ran around the stage almost violently and watching Laertes unable to reach her in her grief was heartbreaking. I teared up again when I wrote it down with my fountain pen in my notebook that I use to write my substack and it’s made me tear up again typing this out.

I was so blown away by a director and company that not only had such a deep understanding of the play itself but also truly knew why they were staging this piece now. I watched a play about cost of revolution and the price of rising up against a system that oppresses.

It’s a rather beautiful, if humbling, experience to have one’s mind changed when it comes to such a long held belief. I’ve sat with it for a couple of days now, laughing at my own stubbornness. Because it turns out that great things are great for a reason, who knew?

And wow did it make me love theatre. Which is a bumpy relationship for me at the best of times. But this is why theatre is important. I sat in a dark space and cried, laughed, and cried again. I am so angry at the moment for so many reasons, but for two hours (and 50 minutes - not into brevity either is our Will) a company of actors carried that for me. They reflected it back to me in a shape that felt manageable when I walked home.

So it is with a heavy heart that I relinquish my long held belief that Hamlet Sucks.

Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I it turns out. And sometimes that’s a good reminder.