★★★★★★
Under duress, I have been forced to write this (hostage-situation-biased) review of the performance. This really was the best performance I have ever seen of Hamlet. Ever. I promise.
The fact that there was absolutely no set whatsoever was really great because it meant I could focus on the fact that there was no Hamlet. It certainly didn’t make it look like they’d left out a hugely important part of the aesthetic experience and it definitely didn’t make it look in any way shit. This aspect of the show made a hugely convincing point about consumer culture and the environment.
The most interesting aspect of the performance was the lack of the character Hamlet. Most scenes were complicated by the removal of the dominant male. Hamlet’s madness is created by the characters around him, but can Hamlet be mad if he doesn’t exist?
Most interestingly, the ending challenged our preconceptions about death – the characters had plotted to kill the absent figure of Hamlet. Hypontast Productions has really left us wondering about whether being alive is a necessary requirement for being killed, opening up the question of where the meta- phoric nature of our language leads us (the answer presumably is death).
What I loved about the production was its length. They really managed to race through some scenes and the play overall lasted just over an hour, which is the perfect length for any student drama. Fundamentally this per- formance challenges all of our preconcep- tions about theatre and about ourselves, not one is left untouched by the performance’s depth.
Should there be a main character? Should there be any characters? What is a character? Am I a character? Am I a person? Some people thought Hamlet was alright how Shakespeare had written it, but seeing this production they have got it all wrong – what he should have done is removed the main character and ramped the pace up.
