by Arthur Unger
Christian
Science Monitor 1980
‘Tis a pity Hamlet never got to be king.’
That’s not Shakespeare speaking, but Derek Jacobi, the actor who plays
the melancholy Dane (I promised myself I wouldn’t use that hackneyed phrase
but here I am utilizing it already) in the new BBC “Shakespeare Plays”
production (Monday, 8-11:30 p.m., check local listings for premiere and
repeats).
“He would have
made a fine monarch,” Mr. Jacobi told me the other day.
“According to Ophelia, before Hamlet went mad, he was a true
Renaissance prince who probably would have made a wonderful king . . .”
Mr. Jacobi,
pronounced Jack-Oby, with the accent on the Jack, (“My great grandfather was
German”) speaks about Shakespearean characters as if they were living,
breathing people today.
“It is one
of the inconsistencies of ‘Hamlet’ that the monarchy is an elected one . . .
and wouldn’t necessarily have passed from father to son.
Claudius was elected by council. Claudius
is the people.
If the people liked Hamlet the people would vote for Hamlet.
So it wouldn’t necessarily follow that on his father’s death Hamlet
would become king. Claudius got in
there first while Hamlet was still at school at Wittenburg.
Claudius was already counting the votes.
But I do think Hamlet would have done rather well if he had ever made
king.”
Mr. Jacobi
is, at present, playing the lead in “The Suicide,” an anti-establishment
(especially the Soviet establishment) play written by Nikolai Erdman in Russia
in the 1920s; supressed there and only now being rediscovered and produced all
over the world. But Mr. Jacobi
claims he is nonpolitical, quite satisfied with the British monarchy.
“At the
moment it is riding particularly high, isn’t it?” he says uneasily.
“I think Prince Charles is a good idea, enormously popular.
The worry is that what happened to Edward VII will happen to
Charles—Elizabeth will reign so long that he’ll be an old man by the time he
becomes king.
“I suppose
if I am anything political, I am right wing.
I vote for Margaret Thatcher. I’m
not committed to either side but I veer toward the right.
I would hate to live in a real socialist state, however.
‘The Suicide’ is giving me an awful taste of what it must be like . .
. always observed, always having to conform to somebody else’s philosophy of
life. But here I am getting
political . . .,” he interrupts himself.
So, back to
Hamlet, where Mr. Jacobi feels more at ease.
He says there are all kinds of Hamlets—political, emotional,
intellectual, spiritual, physical, psychological.
But they can’t all be done simultaneously, he believes.
An actor must choose one area for emphasis.
Which has Derek Jacobi chosen?
The answer
is self-explanatory when one has seen his BBC Hamlet—Jacobi has made him a
repressed, emotionally disturbed Hamlet, a Hamlet who explodes into frenzy
whenever his control slips a bit.
“Really,
it is the personality of the actor playing the role which is the determining
factor. You don’t actually have
to play the character, you play the situation in which Hamlet finds himself and
your own personality, your own outlook takes over.
That’s why the part is played differently by so many different actors,
all doing perfectly valid interpretations.
Hamlet is a universal man, he is all of us.
“I’ve
found that I put myself as a person in Hamlet’s situation and, rather than
acting, I have reacted.”
Mr. Jacobi
seems a bit disturbed about his own explanation.
“But I find analyzing him more difficult than playing him.
I am an instinctive actor. I
could much more easily get up now and demonstrate it for you than find the right
words to explain what I do.”
All of this
is spoken quietly, gently, although Mr. Jacobi’s onstage Hamlet is disturbed,
emotional.
Mr. Jacobi
has played the role often. He has
done a rather innovative Hamlet with Old Vic (the famous ‘To be or not to
be’ soliloquy was spoken to Ophelia, and there was a much more physically
incestuous relationship with Gertrude). The
current TV Hamlet is more traditional, except for symbolic sets in many
instances. In 1977, Mr. Jacobi
toured England with the unorthodox Hamlet, then played the Old Vic in London,
and finally took it on tour in the Middle East.
It was revived in 1979, when it was taken to China.
Audiences in
China, according to Mr. Jacobi, reacted strangely.
“It was shown with five Chinese actors translating simultaneously.
The Chinese enjoyed Hamlet enormously in their own noisy way.
They chatted amongst themselves, ate food.
It wasn’t that they didn’t like it or were restless.
It’s just the way they behave in the theater. At first we were apprehensive, but then we got used to it and
enjoyed it as much as they did.”
Derek Jacobi
has been in New York only once before—to promote his “Richard II” in the
PBS series. American audiences know
him best for that—as well as for his title role in “I, Claudius.”
Some
American critics, including this one, have found “The Suicide” to be the
most important play of the season and Mr. Jacobi’s performance perhaps the
performance of the season, but the play has not yet found its audiences and it
is by no means certain that it will have a long run.
“I am hoping,” he says. “Word
of mouth is good. It would be nice to stay for a while in New York. It’s a bit
like London, where I was born and bred. (He
went on to Cambridge, where he started his acting career in school productions).
The
“nonpolitical Mr. Jacobi” claims to find himself a bit uncomfortable in a
play so politically controversial. “I think it is anti-any
state pressure rather than anti-communist,” he insists.
“The playwright wrote this play in 1929 and when it was in dress
rehearsal in 1932 Stalin’s censors said it couldn’t go on.
The author then disappeared for 10 years, reappeared, and died in 1970
without ever writing another work. And
he never revealed where he was during the years he disappeared.
I find that shocking, frightening.
Have there
been any political repercussions for Mr. Jacobi?
After all, it is a powerful, if entertaining, attack on the restraints on
individual freedom in any socialist state.
“No.
Only one night outside the stage door a lady told me she’d enjoyed my
performance but disagreed with the idea of putting the play on at a time when we
need détente with the Russians.”
What next
for Derek Jacobi?
“I would
prefer to do more theater. Lear, in
particular. Lots of Shakesperean
roles—but not only Shakespeare.
However, I suppose I should do cinema too.
You know, theater has always been the poor relation in England as far as
wages are concerned. Nobody has
ever gotten rich acting in the theater here.
Television is sort of the halfway house.
The big money is in movies, of course.
Maybe I’ll do a movie soon.”
Derek Jacobi
has done “Twelfth Night” in Russia as well as “Hamlet” in China—does
he have any plan to bring other classics to communist countries?
He smiles a
wry smile. “How about ‘The
Suicide’ in Russia?”
If Derek
Jacobi is nonpolitical, he’s slyly, wisely nonpolitical.