The Holocene Mass Exinction Event

He failed to win a nomination for a Laurence Olivier award because a bad back prevented him from completing enough performances, but Mandrake can disclose that fans of David Tennant will have another chance to see him in the role of Hamlet.

The 37-year-old Dr Who actor and the entire cast of the RSC production are preparing to make a film version of the play in June to record for posterity his portrayal, which was described by some as the greatest Hamlet of his generation.

i think the "greatest hamlet of his generation" comment is just possibly a bit much. but who fucking cares because THEY'RE RECORDING IT!! i eagerly await patrick stewart's claudius and the scene in gertrude's closet. oh yeah! meanwhile i am too amused by the headline: "David Tennant's curtailed Hamlet will rise from the grave". zombie hamlet sounds like a project that should already exist somewhere, surely?

i have been avoiding posting about the RSC's current production of hamlet because it's pretty much bound to be completely embarrassing if i reveal the actual depth of the existential angst i have been experiencing by knowing that this production is happening but that i CAN'T SEE IT. there is a mathematical formula i have come up with that begins to convey it:

prof_ + unavailable(hamlet[tennantxstewart]) = ;___________; x FOREVER

god i'm lame.

but seriously! HAMLET. anyone who's been around my journal for the long haul will know a little about the essays, installations, comics, and choose-your-own-adventures i have created based around hamlet (not to mention the icons. oh man). hamlet is one of those stories that i find endlessly fascinating and endlessly fruitful to explore. hamlet is a limitless mirror for society and a bottomless well of self-reflection for humanity. every production has a different thing to say, every performance. hamlet is a multiverse of possibilities.

i think anything that reaches a certain level of cultural importance becomes a kind of multiverse within which can be found a sort of medium for playing with our ideas of ourselves, our relationships, our culture, our history, the universe as a whole. hamlet is probably the most important and time-honoured example of this development ever (outside the purview of religion, of course -- that is a whole other essay. or... million).
it's not that hamlet is the best play that was ever written, although it is really quite good, it's that it was produced at just the place, in just the right time, so that it has become a symbol for human endeavour and creativity that far outweighs it's importance as a play merely. it's HAMLET.

so anyway i've been on the lookout for reviews of the current RSC production with david tennant and patrick stewart. patrick stewart is my favourite claudius of all time, guys! i have yet to find anyone even approach the depth and complexity of his claudius. i want to see him now, 28 years later, and even more amazing and layered and moving. everything i've read so far indicates that to be the case, which makes me incredibly excited, even though i can't see it.

also, i am so glad that david tennant is apparently Quite Good, with the chance (some even say almost certainty) of his performance maturing into one of the greats.
( links to reviews and a bit of teal deer )

oh how i wish someone would post a picture of the scene with the ghost. guess i will have to go with a photo from my other favourite scene, namely act III scene iv, when hamlet goes to gertrude's closet after the play:



seriously, RSC. record this.

So, I'm doing a google search to find anything about Nicol Williamson, as there is a very sorry lack of information about him online, and I'm curious! Anywho, here is something someone said about his Hamlet:

"This Hamlet's tragedy is not that he could not make up his mind, but that his intelligence couldn't save him from his character."

AHHHHH, I want to see it so much, even though I found out that they really CUT the play (running time is like 117 minutes!!). Even if everyone else in the film is completely awful (which is impossible), it would be worth seeing just for five minutes of Williamson's acting. Ooh, I caught a glipmse of Gordon Jackson as Horatio, though... yee-ikes. Let's hope his beard wasn't as bushy as I thought.

From the book John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet, which is actually a transcript of the rehearsals, and extremely interesting! This was too funny not to share:

Gielgud: And I do beg you, Linda [Ophelia], in the mad scene, to wear your blouse right open. Modesty aside! Don't tie it in front. I suppose it would be too much for not to have it at all, just to wear the brassiere and the skirt. Do you think that would be too much? Would that embarass you?

Linda Marsh: Yes.

Gielgud: It would. Well, perhaps it wouldn't be so good. You might look like the Playboy Bunny of Elsinore. And Rosencrantz, don't come in with that empty scabbard in the "Hide fox" scene. Leave it offstage. It looks most indecent, that white flexible scabbard, hanging like that.

DAVID WARNER IN HAMLET
by Mary Z. Maher and William Shakespeare
Depending on whom you're listening to, David Warner may have been the best Hamlet of this century... or the worst.


When David Warner was performing Hamlet at the RSC one evening, a member of the audience actually entered the play. It was near the end of the second act, just after Hamlet dismisses Rosencrantz and Guilderstern. With a sigh of relief, Warner breathed,

Now I am alone.

He raked the stalls with his eyes, scooping in the
balcony with a wide look, and then began the soliloquy:

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstruous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his whole conceit
That from her working, all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing.
For Hecuba!

The audience followed him closely. He gave the natural builds in the speech, moving through:

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculty of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can't say nothing - no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made.
At the series of short questions begining with:
Am I a coward?

Warner paused, just to think about what he'd said. Surprisingly, one of the spectators shouted, "Yes!"

Warner responded:

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i'th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

And now a name was shouted from the audience! Warner was excited and responded with some vehemence:

Hah, 'swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be
That I am pigeon-liver'd...

Warner remembered this as one of the most exhilarating nights of his acting career. He was stunned with the rightness of feeling and the naturalness of speaking these soliloquy lines to the theatre audience. The text supported him absolutly. No adjusments in timing, motivation or thought needed the be made. He was still making discoveries inside the act of performance, and it filled him with a sense of awe about Shakespeare dramaturgy.


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