Hamlet

In response to lockdown measures, Shakespeare’s Globe streamed 2018 Hamlet online, with Michelle Terry in the title role. It was accessible for free from 6 to 19 April 2020. On the first day, it was put online at 7 p.m. GMT, which corresponds to 8 p.m. in France. I wanted to play at ‘going to the theatre’, so I imagined that if I respected the tacit pact of performance between artists and spectators by being in front of my computer at 8 p.m. sharp, it would help me create the illusion that I was attending a ‘real’ performance. It started with the sound of a bell striking 12 in Elsinore, which was echoed by the bells of a neighbouring church striking 8, in spectacular simultaneity. Moreover, I had forgotten that the eight tolls were also the signal for France’s daily ‘Clap for Our Carers’ tribute, and the clapping drowned Bernardo’s opening lines. This applause before the performance I was about to watch, rather than at the end of it, heralded a theatrical evening that promised to invite a peculiar kind of spectating.

Hamlet – along with As You Like It – opened Terry’s first season as the Globe’s Artistic Director. This presented her with a double challenge, since she was also playing what is probably the most famous theatre role in history. Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s androgynous characters, so it was not all that revolutionary to see Terry in the title role – Sarah Bernhardt played the Prince for his very first appearance onscreen in 1900, and Asta Nielsen also played Hamlet in 1921. Terry was a witty and intense Hamlet, speaking her lines quickly but clearly.

Terry’s entrance dressed as a white clown with a disturbing grin on her face was also surprising to say the least. It highlighted – perhaps over-obviously – the character’s foolish traits, yet gave Terry the freedom to play with the text; when Polonius asked her what she was reading, she answered ‘Words, words, words’ (2.2.1296) and went on repeating ‘words’ over and over again like a character in a cartoon. The whole scene became burlesque: Terry played with the rhythm, accelerating then pausing, mimicking Polonius, repeating what he had just said with a comical intonation to trigger laughter among the audience. Her edgy sense of humour also managed to denounce the hypocrisy and hidden agendas of the other characters and her Hamlet used laughter as a weapon. Initially, Terry offered a subtle reading of the role, suggesting that Hamlet was keeping his anger locked inside. After her encounter with the ghost, it became cynical fury that turned into rage in the second part of the play. Her intense performance became increasingly obdurate, and the actors had to speak more and more loudly, almost shouting at times, to keep up. Yet, it led Shubham Saraf to portray a self-destructive Ophelia, hitting her or his own chest furiously when grieving her father’s death, brilliantly revealing new traits of the character’s madness. Nevertheless, I found this excess of anger tiring and it made it very hard for me to stay focused.

The fact that I was watching the performance on a small screen did not help. The sense of being part of a community of viewers was faint, and it altered the sense of obligation to the actors that I would have in a physical theatre. There was no need to stay still – since I would not be disturbing anyone by moving around – and I wandered away from my screen when I got hungry, musing that seventeenth-century spectators were free to eat, talk, and walk around. I then realised that this freedom I initially enjoyed was disturbing no-one but myself and I finally decided to stay put. The altered ‘pact of performance’ did not include silence anymore. In closed theatre venues, external noises are muted by soundproof walls. From the moment I heard the applause outside, I focused on the correspondence between the external sounds that reached me from outside, disturbing my viewing experience here and now, and those that disturbed the open-air performance when it was filmed. The actors’ spontaneity to answer such intrusions was perfect: when the First Player (Jack Laskey) recited Aeneas’s account of Priam’s slaughter, a plane flew noisily over the wooden O. As he said ‘A silence in the heavens’, he paused and looked at the sky, waiting for silence to return and triggering laughter among the audience. During Claudius’s soliloquy, James Garnon reacted to a seagull’s cry by turning his head briskly towards the sound as if it were a mysterious answer to his prayers. I had also heard seagulls’ cries outside my windows minutes earlier, and hearing this same sound in the performance brought me closer to the Globe’s audience; I felt included.

Terry and the directors, Federay Holmes and Elle While, had certainly contributed to creating this feeling by building this performance around the notion of inclusion. One of the production’s most interesting aspects was the use of British Sign Language (BSL) as a means of communication between Nadia Nadarajah, who played Guildenstern, and the other members of the company. Hamlet’s masterly use of BSL shed light on the theatrical potential of this language, but also highlighted his intelligence and modernity, setting him apart from the archaic King Claudius who was clumsily using vague gestures to communicate with Guildenstern. BSL was not always translated and the recurrent signs soon became recognisable by the audience, underscoring the instructive and inclusive nature of the production. The relationship between the stage and the audience was, in my opinion, the most interesting aspect of this Hamlet. Terry entered the stage in tears for her ‘To be, or not to be’ monologue. She walked to the very edge of the stage, sat, and took a spectator’s hand in hers. She spoke to that man. Everyone in the audience turned to look at them, and the silence that followed was moving. The camera filmed the stranger, and I found myself simultaneously watching the audience and the actress. There was a double level of spectating: I was a viewer looking at spectators who were looking at Terry and her improvised partner.

The directors chose not to stage The Mousetrap scene, keeping only the dumbshow. Instead, they replaced it with music (composer James Maloney), played by the Globe’s band from the second gallery facing the stage. The King and the Queen sat facing the audience, Ophelia and Polonius stood beside them while Hamlet paced back and forth, and they all pretended to watch the play-within-the-play, when actually watching the band. This arrangement solved the issue that directors often experience when trying both to stage The Mousetrap and to draw attention to King Claudius’s reactions. This often leads them to present the scene from one side or to find a cunning way to avoid having actors turning their backs to the audience. When the musicians started playing and the actors looked in their direction, the camera’s wide angle shot showed spectators following their gaze. As they turned their confused faces towards the gallery where the band was playing – which was where the camera stood – I watched the Globe’s audience looking towards me, making me feel totally included. The camera acted as a chorus – as Ophelia would call Hamlet – and established a connection between actors, their live audience, and future online viewers – of whom I was one.

The collective work that went into conveying a sense of community was probably the most interesting aspect of this production, which reflected Shakespeare’s own inclusive sense of the audience in his plays. Yet, Hamlet revolves around the protagonist’s most intimate thoughts, and the swift pace and frenzied acting somehow diminished his paramount importance. Overall, Holmes and While emphasised the importance of the actor–spectator bond, and the directorial choices for the filming of this production certainly managed to integrate both the spectator and the viewer. This Hamlet may not be my most memorable theatre-going experience; nevertheless, it left me with a sense of generosity that is all too often absent from theatre productions.