Theatre
Adieu
Duncan Fallowell
Hamlet (Warehouse)
Jonathan Miller has promised that this is to be his last work as a director of plays. He has three operas in the pipeline, then he is saying goodbye to the opera house too, after which he will presumably confine himself to his forte, comic performances on television. Viler has done a lot of direc- ting, largely as a result of his charm. Ob- viously he is warm-hearted, and is popular with actors because he treats their neuroses with interest. But in the general flow of conviviality one thing has been overlooked: his mind, though amusing, is not very in- teresting. If it possesses tension it would ap- pear to be that between a bookish sixth- former and a frightfully keen boy scout.
Miller's creations always have something of the pier end about them. That frightful gusto! The smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the sea ... and usually they are delivered from one obvious angle, with little clevernesses stuck on pompom-like. The most ostentatious pompom here is Kathryn Pogson's rendition of Ophelia's madness which everyone has, er, raved about. As head-plucking goes it is well sustained but so exaggerated that it seems entirely her own overwrought affair, not at all related to the tides of the play, and therefore pro- voking pity, not compassion.
What is lacking is the powerful undertow
of a reorientating intelligence which in- forms all the parts and reveals the drama anew. This is generally lacking in a Miller production, probably because he is too nice to play Hitler even for an evening — the one exception is his remarkable television film o?A lice in Wonderland which vies with Wilde's Salome in French as the most mesmeric thing ever shown on British tele- vision.
Unfortunately Lewis Carroll did not write Hamlet, nor is it about dreams and childhood — although no play is more clouded with chalkdust and spattered with ink pellets, so that the inability to reveal it anew is tantamount to not directing it at all and will leave the audience swimming in and out of nostalgia for their schooldays. Mind you, Miller is not helped by the text. It is all quotations. It is all terribly familiar, even for those who have never seen or read the play before, so that battle is always against incipient corn and ham, against the intrusion of secondary impressions.
The attraction of it, then, for a director is the challenge of overcoming these odds by reinventing its central character, and reinventing him not for the established theatre-goers of the director's own genera- tion, but for the generation to follow, to catch the coming zeitgeist, in short, to capture youth. The obvious angle which occurred to Miller on this occasion was — Hamlet as John McEnroe, Hamlet as Superbrat, neurotic but expressive, pas- sionate but naive, artful but artless, hopeful but hopeless. It can work on its own reduc- ed level of course, and in Anton Lesser's portrayal it works very thoroughly. He is John McEnroe to the tips of his fingers and toes. The kid, both justly and unjustly vexed, zips round the stage like a ferret on cocaine, stopping only in order to stamp his foot or kill someone. But surely this is the zeitgeist that's just gone?
The problem which remains for Anton • Lesser is that which faces all Hamlets: 'To speak this speech differently or not, that is the question; whether it is possible to force out yet another nuance of meaning without sounding forced, or accept the fact that it's just going to sound forced whatever I do .. . ' They all fall for it, they all try to do it differently. Egged on by Miller, Lesser goes for a highly naturalistic approach and the result is, of course, highly mannered. In trying to make his delivery unselfconscious, he exaggerates the shapes of unselfcon- sciousness to a grotesque degree.
Also, frequently he speaks his lines far too quickly and with much splash. Well, a certain amount of splash is expected in tragedy, as proof that one is getting into the part. But it proves contagious. Soon they are all at it, splashing fast and furiously, as if terrified of forgetting their lines before getting them out. Whole stretches of the dialogue, though highly audible, are totally incomprehensible as they dash by in their galoshes. This is the unacceptable face of gusto, although it is a long play, the Warehouse is short of money, and their desire to save electricity is perfectly respect- able. Less so is the feeling that Miller is yet again — trying to play it as another episode of Coronation Street. That is, it may be Hamlet but it's terribly easy to understand really, and really quite peasanty people saw it and took it for granted in Shakespeare's day etc.
It is a short-haired Hamlet, a recession, a miniature, a snatched junk food Hamlet, but not a contemporary one. This whole televisual, anti-theatrical approach is now very dated indeed. In its eagerness to avoid the poetic or magical dimension, to be naturalistic and pull in folks, it must surely be the last of its cycle. This phase of the theatre may be compared to the Catholic Church's abandonment of the Latin Mass. Regardless of what the Church intends to do, it is coming to an end in the theatre, and the departure of Jonathan Miller is as good a way as any to say thanks and wave it off. A new sort of Hamlet will now come into being, far more mysterious and ritualistic, lit by lasers at brilliant, odd angles, with an ambient soundtrack of low electronic washes.
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