Ought Hamlet to have been prosecuted for the death of Polonius? A courtroom drama in more than one respect, Roger Bernat and Yan Duyvendak have created Please Continue (Hamlet), a fascinating piece in which one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters is literally put on trial for his actions. This is a theatrical experience that transcends the boundaries between reality and fiction in a way unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Hamlet, Ophelia and Gertrude were all actors but the lawyers, judge, clerk, and psychiatric expert were professionals who were instructed to treat this case just like any other. Each night the experts are completely different people, sourced locally, meaning that each trial is unique. The production I saw was in France, following the French legal system, though it has been performed in several European countries, each true to their own judicial systems.

I realised that my sympathy for Hamlet as a character influenced how I viewed the case. In this particular production, Hamlet benefitted from an especially enthusiastic defence lawyer, who somewhat overshadowed any sympathy we felt for the depressed Ophelia.

Following the trial, the jury was selected randomly from the audience and given half an hour to settle on a verdict, under the guidance of a legal professional to keep things to time. The experiment was as much an examination of the ethics of Western judicial systems as it was of our interpretation of these characters. The statistics of previous decisions were read out, with outcomes ranging from condemning Hamlet to decades of incarceration, to completely letting him off.

Somewhat inevitably, true legal accuracy was held back by the limits of theatre and room for theatrical entertainment was faced with the limits of the legal realism. Admittedly, three hours of having to concentrate on an intense legal process in French is not how I usually choose to spend my Friday evenings. Nevertheless, this was an immersive, extremely thought-provoking experiment.

As the audience had no idea who would be chosen to participate in the jury, we had the unusual feeling of being actively, inescapably invested. The fourth wall was thus not merely broken but completely non-existent.

The trial also evoked a number of philosophical questions about the idea of determining guilt in such a context. The variation in verdicts despite the case file always being identical is a profound comment on the fallibility of any legal system. Indeed, rather than really determining Hamlet’s guilt or innocence, I found that this theatrical experiment simply highlighted the enigmatic nature of the character, as well as the difficulty of ever truly ascertaining someone’s motives beyond all reasonable doubt.

West Side Story is an iconic musical. From the music to the story, it has a special place in all our hearts, whether it’s your all-time favourite or because you repeatedly listened to ‘Something’s Coming’ during your Music GCSE.

Consequently, drifting into the rehearsal room mid-song, I was immediately lost in nostalgia at the expert vocals of Brandon Levin (Tony). This will be a production which is true to what we know and love about the show. But a sense of nostalgia is definitely not all that Byzantium Productions’ West Side Story has to offer. With original choreography by Ed Addison, a cast of over 30 committed actors and a full orchestra brought to the stage under the watchful eye of Eric Foster, it is sure to be impressive.

Furthermore, as Clemi Collett – Maria – notes, it is “a very ‘raw’ version of West Side Story. The show is aesthetically incredible, and the dancing is stunning, but at the same time I feel as if it’s really explored the depth and meaning behind the text.”

The play follows the rival gangs the Jets and the Sharks, set in the oppressive environment of 1950s Manhattan, counting racism and violence among its themes. It is about how hate breeds hate – something as pertinent to a 1950s audience as it is to us today. At its core, however, is the love story between Tony and Maria. From ‘Balcony Scene (Tonight)’, it was evident to see the chemistry between these two; they have obviously worked hard on conveying the love story that thrives throughout a story full of hate. Speaking of this to Collett, she describes their relationship as “a true and impulsive love, which is coloured, and in the end destroyed, by the world around them”. Put quite beautifully, Maria is “a woman who has learnt to love, but now also to hate.”

Yet, while these themes are addressed, the show does not forget its humour. This was made especially evident by Helena Wilson’s Anita in what is sure to be a showstopping ‘America’.

Furthermore, I was wildly impressed with the slickness and potential of all the numbers I saw in this first stumble run given they still have a few weeks left of rehearsal.

Dom Applewhite, the director, spoke to me about his aim to not have “cardboard cutout” characters. He said, “In my mind, musical theatre acting often looks bland precisely because the actors have been directed according to the emotions of the scene, rather than allowing them to happen naturally.”

One major way of questioning this has been through Maria, who, whilst a great character, suffers from her position as a woman. This is evident in a number of ways, such as Maria being given only one solo compared to Tony’s two. To combat this, he has actively tried to be aware of the stereotypes and has researched feminism in musical theatre – “It’s an old musical, but we’ve definitely imbued it with a Twenty-First century attitude!”

What was most palpable about the run was the sense of excitement among the cast seeing each other’s work for the first time; they seem to know they are on to something good. And, given what I’ve seen and the fact that already a quarter of tickets have sold, I have to agree. Something’s coming indeed and I can’t wait to see it.

★★★☆☆
Three stars

Of her many accolades, Hilary Mantel can perhaps be most proud of arousing the Daily Mail’s ire. She did so by doing what novelists are supposed to – spotting that which is too directly in front of everyone’s noses for anyone else to notice. To her we owe thanks for observing that Thatcher was a ‘psychological transvestite’ and for noting that the media sees Kate Middleton as a doll on which to hang clothes. Her talent for capturing an attitude in one wry, glancing phrase is abundantly displayed in her latest collection of stories – The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – as is her deeply felt ‘Maggiephobia’. 

The first story, ‘Sorry to Disturb’, easily eclipses the rest. This autobiographical piece recalls the years she spent in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia, where a Pakistani businessman’s knock at her door resulting in a comedy of crossed cultures and crossed wires. Yet the overall impression is not comic, because it is as much a sketch as a story of a woman, both claustrophobic and agoraphobic, trapped far from home in a cockroach-patrolled flat, and unwilling to venture into the unfriendly city. 

Unfortunately, not all the stories are so good. ‘Winter Break’ follows a couple’s taxi journey, where the driver hits some creature then finishes it off with a rock, and dumps its corpse in the boot. The classic structure of the short story is identifiable: the ambiguity, about whether the ‘kid’ the car hit was of the four-legged, grass-chewing sort, finds its inevitable resolution in the final sentence. The trouble is, no author in their right mind would finish a story by saying, “Oh, it was just a goat,” so we already realise the car actually hit a human child long before Mantel confirms it. 

Like ‘Winter Break’, ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ describes a bourgeois life interrupted – by the Prime Minister’s eye operation at the hospital near the narrator’s house, then by a call from an IR A assassin requiring a vantage point. The cliché-heavy dialogue which these two very different anti-Thatcherites exchange dissipates the early promise of the story. This makes it the crassest of what is generally a subtle and highly readable collection. 

Given his status as one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets and musicians, Gil Scott-Heron’s early prose fiction has had a tendency to be somewhat eclipsed. The ‘godfather of rap’ took a year out of a degree he never finished to complete his novel The Vulture, which was published simultaneously with Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970; and, while he did go on to publish another – The Nigger Factory – in 1972, the LP Heron made of Small Talk was to mark the beginning of a recording career from which he would not look back. 

The Vulture is ostensibly a murder mystery – one which weaves together the lives of four men as it relates the story of the death of John Lee – but the novel is not so much a thrilling page-turner as a rich, poetic evocation of the lives of young black New Yorkers in the 1960s. The prose is imbued with the rhythms of Heron’s poetry, and it hangs somewhere between fiction and music even as it describes the grittiest of drug-related murders; indeed, when the characters name (as they often do) the songs playing at certain moments of their story, it only provides a label for the organic beat that has been running through the words themselves. The political consciousness and satirical edge present in Heron’s recorded music are equally felt in The Vulture, and there’s no denying that it’s a novel which is going to make you uncomfortable. The visceral reality of the world his characters inhabit gives you the feeling that you should just shut up and listen – this murder mystery is not one that invites the reader’s judgment.

The Vulture captures better than most other novels of the time the intangible atmosphere of the era it describes. You’re really living and breathing it until you’re hit with a killer line, such as, “They had decided long ago that the game of life really was not worth playing, because the inventor of the game kept most of the rules a secret,” that reminds you that this is the work of a poet who has constructed with absolute mastery a world that to you seems so very, very real. The ‘mystery’ element isn’t by any stretch the most exciting part of the book – indeed, the revelation of the murderer is so anticlimactic that it’s not initially obvious who it is – but it doesn’t matter; this novel is important. You only have to read it to know.

Jonathan Yeo is interviewing me – and oh, he’s good! “How’s Oxford?” he asks, with the ease of genuine interest. “What are you doing over the holidays?”

It’s almost impossible to dislike Yeo – he’s all twinkly eyes and charm, even down the phone. I wonder if Britain’s leading portrait artist, with a landmark exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and a major 2014 retrospective at The Lowry to his name, is actually most talented as a master in charm offensive, which might originate from the artist’s close observation of the games people play. “No matter how much [people] try to put a particular face on when you first meet them, at some point they let their guard down. But sometimes you’re dealing with manipulators of their own image – actors, models, politicians all fall into the same category – and you can’t always be sure with people who are so good at doing that whether what you are getting at the end isn’t just a very sophisticated performance.”

And what actors, models and politicians. They include Damien Hirst, Paris Hilton, and a glistening, naked, flagrantly pregnant Sienna Miller, as well as Tony Blair’s infamous official portrait. On painting celebrities, Yeo notes, “Obviously it’s harder when you’re dealing with people [whom] you tend to know a bit about, [but] I try to go in neutral and without any preconceptions.” 

I query whether portraiture is arguably a record of an interaction rather than a portrayal of the sitter. “All portraits are a document of the relationship between artist and subject.It’s more interesting if you can start with a relatively blank sheet and see how [the subject] comes across to you.” So is the success of a portrait related to how much you like the person? “The ones I feel like hanging onto are the ones where I’ve enjoyed the process because I’ve enjoyed their company. You don’t always have to like someone. Sometimes you haven’t particularly liked the subject, but you have had a strong enough reaction to them…to make something interesting of it. The ones that don’t work are the ones where you get bored along the way.” I am struck once again by his conviviality, how Yeo manages to be both figurehead of the contemporary artistic intelligentsia and naughty schoolboy, permanently perched on the edge of a chuckle. 

He also defies art scene fads. “It seems obvious to me that fashions always change and people who’ve got something interesting to say will always have relevance.” A trustworthy schoolboy, then, with languid tones that are punctuated only by the sharp wit skimming beneath the surface. No wonder the establishment likes him.

Except, that is, when he decided to collage the President of the United States, amongst others, in hardcore porn. As you do. Apparently, however, it was not the response to a cancelled commission from Bush that the press made it out to be.

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 “[The subjects] were very much public images and so they were trading off their reputations,” he explains, “I wasn’t trying to give any sort of insight into who these people actually were, it was a purely Warhol thing of using their reputation as public image and playing with that.” A social comment then? “They all in some way trade off sexuality or nudity or their attitude towards things. [The project] became just as much about the proliferation of pornography…five, six years ago the pervasion of pornographic and semi-pornographic images in the media and advertising seemed to be increasing, and so we had immediate access to them all.”

There’s a defiance to him too that can be seen in these pieces that writhe with eroticism and intensity. “I was aware that my style might adapt well to collage because of the way I tended to break things up on top of the painting anyway, and the obvious question therefore was where would you get a lot of skin going in the source material.”

It was a similar situation with a series of portraits documenting women before and after cosmetic operations, “I got distracted for a while by all the possibilities [for meaning] with that…working out how much you could read into that person’s motivations and self-doubt and compulsion to follow fashion or a certain way of being seen and what they were doing to themselves, rather than any kind of penetrating, psychological character study.”

“As I’ve gone on, I’ve gotten more into letting in [other possibilities for meaning within portraiture], subtly layering complex narratives or wider ideas into a picture. I think it’s a shame not to try that, not to be a little bit ambitious.”

And then? “There was a logic to [the series], but I was very aware that it would be a playful thing as well…it’s fun then when people realize what they’re looking at and that changes their relationship with the picture as an object. And then you go into a whole new territory beyond painting, so that’s the fun of it really.”

We’re back with the witty schoolboy, tongue very much in cheek.