From Old Vic Company
Hamlet
Theatre Program
1978
There are as many Hamlets as there are actors to play him. It is a role of dizzying challenge to any actor's armoury of mental, vocal and psychological ingenuity as well as a severe test of his physical stamina. It is the role that, above all others, invites inevitable comparisons with the giants of the past, both distant and recent. The moment any actor announces his intention to jump through the classical hoop which the play has become, a long and sanctified tradition of stage business and line inflection is instantly recalled. The aspirations of the classical actor are rigorously tried before a distinguished jury; his feet of presumptions clay must attempt to walk unscratched across the fiery coals of recorded achievement. There's more than one ghost in Hamlet! A typical audience is bristling with contradictions and preconceptions. Even those who have never seen the play know that their prince should be like: "He's blond and broody" - "No, he's dark and saturnine'; "He's in love with his mother", "No, he's in love with his father!"; "He mistreats Ophelia shamefully", " No, she mistreats him shamefully!", etc, etc. Scholars, too, have written laborious volumes of thoroughly convincing, exhaustively documented and mutually exclusive arguments on the nature and motivation of the man and his play. But the richness of his character, the unique beauty and power of his words, the kaleidoscope of his emotions and the mosaic of his imaginings can only be fully realized by the actor. His task is gargantuan, and no actor could ever fill the absolute potential of the challenge, either to his own or the audience's greatest expectations.
Hamlet can be played at almost any age - I made my first tilt at the Danish windmill as a less that clear-skinned schoolboy, all rant and rave, piling my Pelian of enthusiasm and good intentions upon my Ossa of inexperience and impertinence. Now, in my middle years, (with a great deal more trepidation, looking now before and after, instead of merely ahead) I have the good fortune to make another attempt at the assault course. Hopefully, there will be other opportunities in the future- after all, Hamlet has been played, with some acclaim, by actors in their sixties; not to mention, actresses.
The mysteries of any art form are highly individual and instinctive and the intricacies of a characterization are carefully interwoven with the minutiae of an actor's own spirituality. All I can say is that any attempt to hammer Hamlet into a unified conception set on a single theme sets at high risk his simple, human reaction, and above all, his wit. There is great humor mixed into that Ellsinore cauldron, ironic, sardonic, sarcastic, black, but a wit essentially accessible and irrepressible.
I find acting difficult to analyse for myself, and well nigh impossible to talk about, and those thrilling moments when a part takes an actor into overdrive, he himself may be only dimly aware of the mechanics. It's called inspiration and it comes all too rarely. In any case, no self-respecting conjuror tells his audience how the tricks are done. If I could show Hamlet's reality, his contemporary accessibility, transmit an unstable malaise, with the blood of the courtier, soldier, scholar burning through his veins, and the unfathomable questions gnawing at his heart, then I would like to think that I was, at least, on the right path and in the right mold.
More
importantly, I would not do this alone. The
play may be called Hamlet, indeed, but it is not, never has been, and I hope,
never will be a one-man show.