THE BALLET
mtasia on " Hamlet." At the New Theatre.
p present the story of Hamlet in terms of mime and dance without °ming the external dramatic shell of its inward tragic meaning ; co.npress Shakespeare's five acts within the compass of twenty mutes ; and to fit the action sensibly to. the music of Tchaikovsky's Intisy-Overture, which is not a dramatic tone-poem, but a rumina- pp upon the theme of Hamlet—these are the brave tasks under- ken by Mr. Robert Helpmann in his new ballet, produced by the Idler's Wells Company last week. He has approached his theme usly and with the intention of showing us what Hamlet is really
ut, and his courage has its reward. Though much is lost and
piece has obvious faults, a great part of the kernel of the tragedy miraculously preserved. The choreographer is not greatly helped the music. For, apart from the fact that he presents no dramatic uence of events, Tchaikovsky took the conventional view of et and painted a portrait of " The Gloomy Dane " with
ows unrelieved. At the end he skips Fortinbras's speech like Al actor-manager, and seeing the direction " a dead march," us not " the soldiers' music and the rites of war," but a fort-
e of the self-pitying basses in the finale of the Pathetic Symphony. the potential man of action that Hamlet is cannot be emphasised. Mr. Helpmann gets over the difficulty created by the actual form the music by presenting Hamlet's tragedy in the form of a dream
comes after he has " shuffled off this mortal coil." So it has peculiar fluidity and inner logic of a dream. One point upon
ch he lays particular stress is the identity in Hamlet's mind of rude and Ophelia. Because Gertrude is unfaithful, Ophelia be false. So when he looks on his mother he sees also Ophelia, the confusion grows until it is Ophelia who enacts the part of Player-Queen and Gertrude, who is discovered when Hamlet aside the shroud in the graveyard scene. This may sound just udian commonplace in print, but it makes very effective and ring drama. Mr. Helpmann has made an imaginative re-creation another medium of Shakespeare's poetic idea. He also manages preserve, with the aid of the Fool-Gravedigger, Hamlet's savage corn and his fascinated disgust with the corruption of the flesh death—and, indeed, in life. As a ballet, the piece suffers from the compression of so much so little space that there is hardly any room for dancing. It is tragic pantomime. And, ideally, I suppose it cannot be called a plete and self-contained work of art. It presumes a knowledge Shakespeare and is in the nature of a stimulating essay upon his e. It would puzzle exceedingly an audience ignorant of the I. It is admirably performed by a cast headed by Miss teya as Ophelia and Mr. Helpmann himself as Hamlet. The fantasy of Mr. Hurry's decor and costumes contributes its
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