Décor 

      Long before rehearsals begin the director and the designer coordinate their intentions with the aid of a set model. Robin Archer, the designer of Hamlet, has created a single setting for the whole play out of ten vast, dusky drapes, simply patterned in such as way that they could be exterior or interior castle walls.
      ‘The idea is to convey a feeling of claustrophobia, as though they will never open out into daylight.  They are also easy to tour and to set up,’ he explains.  ‘You can’t afford to build an elaborate set and lose a day’s performance putting it up every time you move.’
      Trucking and rigging of the set costs approximately £2,500 a time.  Keith Edmundson, the technical manager, is responsible for getting the set to fit each theatre and to satisfy the stringent safety and fire regulations.
      ‘Few people realize how much these add to the cost of set building, especially in London where they are fiercest,’ he says.  ‘Everything forward of the safety curtain must be made of materials which are not only flame-proofed but will put themselves out.’
      In practice this means using a material called ‘silk noile’ which costs £100 a sheet.  All timber or plywood must be fireproofed, which doubles its cost.
      The claustrophobia of the sets is also the inspiration of the music which Donald Fraser is writing for Hamlet.  It is a series of chilling and eerie sound effects.
      For the opening tableau, for example, three discordant bell chimes strike together through the darkness.  A strange chirruping heralds the imminent appearance of the ghost.  A live trumpet with an echo, played in combination with a tape of the same music, gives the effect of fanfares bounding off the castle battlements into endless space.
      ‘It’s like composing a film score,’ Donald Fraser explains.  ‘The music is there to focus the mood of the play at a particular moment.’     
      When you are touring continually with the minimum of set, the actors and their costumes are the scenery to an important extent.  The designers’ costume sketches are photographed and pasted into a large book—known in the wardrobe as the ‘Bible’.  Pinned alongside them are samples of the fabrics to be used.  Often, for economy’s sake, they are furnishing fabrics, which can save £1,000 a show.
      ‘A lot of this is old rubbish,’ says Robin Archer, supervising the fitting of the grandiose cloak of the First Player.  ‘This is all cheap curtaining that started off as bright orange or yellow lurex. We take it to someone and ask them to dye it a bad black.  As a result it comes out reddish, greenish or goldish and looks old, rich, and rather tasteful.’  To enrich the effect, gold paint mixed with glue is applied with a glue gun, as decoration.
      You can achieve much with illusion but one thing which cannot be made out of cheap substitutes causes one of the heaviest wardrobe bills—boots and shoes.  A pair of thigh boots costs £95 to make.
      ‘Spear-carriers have to put up with what we’ve got left over from old productions,’ says the wardrobe mistress, Vivienne Jenkins.  ‘We wouldn’t put anyone in a pair that’s too small.  But we might put them in a pair that’s too big and pad them out.’
      The costumes are mostly made by outworkers who specialize in theatre clothing.  Every theatre company has its circle of makers, and there are six of them working on costumes for Hamlet.
      The definition of a prop is something that can be picked up and carried by an actor.  The prop shop practices the same arts of disguise. Metal finishes are simulated with polyester resin.  What looks like bronze shields, helmets and sword belts turn out to be fiberglass and latex. And it is amazing what rich trimmings can be made out of webbing, piano felt, plastic pipe and piped glue, which looks like filigree cake icing.
            Stage swords are liable to cost £80 each and are always getting notched and dented.  Foils for duels tend to break near the points.  Yorick’s (fibreglass) skull has to be obtained from a medical model-makers for £25.  A real one, alas poor skull, would be too fragile to stand up to nightly use.

The Actors

 
What does it feel like to play Hamlet?  After a week Derek Jacobi is beginning to find out.  It means three hours on the stage, almost uninterrupted, during which every eye must be on you.
      From his first bitter jibe at the king—‘A little more than kin and less than kind’—until the last gasp—‘The rest is silence’—lies a Grand National course for an actor.  It stretches for over 1,100 lines, full of pitfalls and peaks, soliloquies and climaxes in which he must act madness, real or feigned, dissemble with Claudius, tease Polonius, be ruthless with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, break Ophelia’s heart, be heartbroken by his mother and then, having put everything into this, fight an elaborate and exhausting duel before dying.  Many seasoned actors have been winded before the closet scene with the Queen, let alone the duel.
      Derek Jacobi amazed the rest of the cast by arriving at the first rehearsal word perfect.  ‘Usually I learn my lines along with the moves when the play is being blocked, but this part is so long that I didn’t want to waste rehearsal time.  I decided to get the lines out of the way first if I could.  I was pleased to find how well they’d stuck.’
      Jacobi is well aware of the steepness of the mountain he has set himself to climb.  ‘Unless you learn to pace it, it’s the most knackering show ever.  You must discover how much energy you need to use in each particular scene so that you don’t exhaust yourself too soon.  Health is terribly important to an actor.  I keep a rowing machine at home to help keep me fit.
      ‘As an actor you need three things—energy and luck and talent.  You may have all the talent necessary but you still have to have the luck to be given the chances and then, when you get the chances, you must have the energy to take them.  Of course, once you’re on, the stage produces its own energy. You may arrive at the theater sometimes feeling, “God, how am I going to do it?” but when you get out there, the energy comes out of the air like an electric charge.  It’s a physical feeling.  There are times when the audience somehow lets you know that you are hitting it properly, when you know what is coming is going to go right.’
      Luck has played a considerable part in Derek Jacobi’s unconventional career—he never went to drama school.  ‘I had three major lucky breaks.  At Cambridge I did a production of Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, which we played in the Memorial Gardens at Stratford.  A director of Birmingham Rep saw it and he remembered me when I wrote round later trying to get a job.  At Birmingham I got three plum parts and, by luck, I was seen in them by Laurence Olivier and he invited me to join him at Chichester in what was to become the National Theater Company.  The third piece of luck came there.  I was understudying Jeremy Brett.  He was bought out to play in a film and I got his parts—including Laertes in the opening of Hamlet.’
      When the television series, I, Claudius, catapulted Jacobi to fame he had already worked hard for 15 years on the classical stage.  ‘It made me known to a vast audience who had never heard of me  I used to get letters asking if I had ever acted before.’
      In fact he had agreed to do Hamlet with Prospect before the television serial came up.  Why?  ‘Everyone who aspires to be a classical actor has a Hamlet somewhere inside him.  It’s become a sort of examination hoop to jump through.  You can do all sorts of classical parts but this one is the test.  People say, “Yes, but what is his Hamlet like?”  I hope I play it more than once because there’s no end to it.  You keep changing all the time as you find your rhythm.’
      Even after he had been playing the part for months he found it always gave him nerves.  ‘You think this is the night they’ll find you out.  You have to prove your ability each time you do it.  I can’t, for example, have a glass of wine at lunchtime or go to the pictures in the afternoon if I am playing Hamlet that night.  It looms up from about two o’clock onwards as the focal point of the day.  You spend almost all day thinking about it. 
      What is it like, at the other end of the scale, to be a walk-on?
     Jeffrey Daunton, who is 28, is one of these although he has a great deal more to do than just walk on to the stage carrying a spear.  He is hectically busy changing costumes and listening for cues throughout the performance because he ‘doubles’ in five parts.  They include Francisco, Reynaldo and Cornelius, though few people in the audience know them by name or realize it is the same actor playing them.  The other two parts are as soldiers in opposing armies (a quick change of cloaks and helmets there).
      Jeffrey has less than 30 lines to speak all evening—though plenty of people wait a long time to have that many—so what makes him want to do it?
      ‘Burton and all that lot started by carrying spears,’ he justifiably points out.  ‘The experience you get in a company like that is really good. You are learning to carry your costumes and your wigs, you are learning to vary your make-up, you can observe really top actors at work, you are learning your craft.  The money’s not that fantastic but what’s money?’
      Jeffrey has been trying for two years to get into Prospect.  This year he is rewarded for patience by getting an audition and a total of nine parts in the season.
      ‘I got interested at my comprehensive school, which had a good drama section.  I was advised either to go to drama school or become an ASM straight away.  I went to Guildford as an ASM and got my Equity card.  Eventually I went to drama school for three years, came out and went touring with Brian Rix and his company.
      ‘Last year I was out of work almost all the year, with a few days’ work doing television, a commercial and a film to keep me going—just.  Luckily I could live at home.  After that, this job is welcome and there’s the attraction of touring and going abroad to places you would probably never visit otherwise.’  
      Touring is expensive for the actor, despite the touring allowance of £35 a week.  This only just covers digs, meals and necessities.  ‘You can soon be out of pocket on drinks, eating out and having a taxi home at night,’ says Jeffrey Daunton.
      Older actors with families are much less inclined to tour for long.  ‘I missed having a summer holiday with my kids for three out of the last four years,’ says one of them who turned down this summer’s tour.
      Most of them reckon that it is a reasonable average to be in work for a third of the year.  If they stay at home that will be in television or films more often than not, and will earn them at least as much money as solid weeks of touring. When they join Prospect it is for the sake of the work, not the money.
      There are no fortunes paid in a company like this, though you often work a 13-hour day for six days a week.  There are three salary brackets.  No actor gets less than £60 a week (the Equity minimum for touring at this time was £38.50).  Walk-ons and bit parts are worth from £60 to £75, according to ability and experience.  The middle range of parts brings in around £100 a week.
      None of the principals, who might well earn as much as £500 from a commercial West End management, gets more than £150 a week.  Since touring rules out the possibility of extra daytime engagements in television or films, their financial sacrifice to play in the classics is considerable.