Author: Neha Srinivasan

Seeing this production of Hamlet was one of those experiences after which I found it impossible to talk about it. Normally, I see a performance, leave the auditorium, and spend the next half hour discussing it. I couldn’t do that last night; I needed time to let my thoughts settle, to fully digest the truth of how magnificent the performance was.

I was first awed by the sheer size of the stage: it must have been two or three times wider than any other stage I’ve seen, and at least twice as deep. This was an ideal setup for the amount of running that happened in the play, for it was surprisingly active. Hamlet, for one, barely ever stood still, and was more often than not moving frenetically around the stage as he spoke, like an excited boy. At certain climactic moments, that frenetic movement extended to the entire cast as they dashed across the stage in time to dissonant music.

Intriguingly, there were disparities in the passage of time in the performance, and there were anachronisms aplenty. The performance opened with Hamlet sitting by himself in a room listening to music on a gramophone, suggesting that the play was set around the 1950s. Horatio’s entrance, with modern spectacles, tattooed arms, and a canvas backpack placed him in the 2000s. But at dinner, the women’s costumes suggested 20^th century, and the opulence of the stage set suggested, perhaps, even earlier. As the play progressed the costumes became increasingly modern: Claudius, who began the play in military suits and tails, ended it wearing a business suit. Guildenstern entered wearing bright red Converse, and Hamlet, by the end, was wearing jeans, Converse, and a hoodie. It seemed that the producers of the play were trying to prevent it from being pigeonholed into one time period, thus avoiding any critique of why a particular era was chosen in which to set the performance.

Another creative choice was the staging of soliloquys. I wondered before the performance how delivering soliloquys would work if there were other people on stage, since having everybody else but the speaker freeze doesn’t seem like a particularly appealing option. This show chose to have the speaker continue at a normal pace while having everyone else onstage continue their normal actions but in slow motion. For example, in the dinner scene in Act 1, Hamlet’s soliloquy expressing his regret that he has lived to see his mother married to his uncle is delivered as everybody else finishes eating and leaves the table in slow motion, giving him ample time to deliver his speech.

Each actor’s interpretation of their character’s response to the tragedy was beautifully developed, and their renditions revitalized the meaning of Shakespeare’s original words. Much was done in the performance, often by Cumberbatch, to render the language and subject matter accessible to the audience. There is humor in Hamlet, visible even when reading the script, and Cumberbatch (often abetted by Polonius) took every opportunity he had, both scripted and unscripted, to make that humor palpable.

Cumberbatch’s willingness to throw himself into his roles made me expect a fair use of floor space: crawling on it, mainly, which definitely happened. What I didn’t expect was the use of other kinds of space—namely, the two instances in which he simply climbed onto a cluttered table and proceeded to proclaim a speech on it. The fluid grace with which he was able to march undeterred down a table crowded with papers and desk lamps was wondrous to behold.

There is a lot of talk about what kind of Hamlet each actor plays. Cumberbatch’s Hamlet was boyish and energetic, passionately in love with Ophelia (though this wasn’t explicit until his declarations at her graveside), and most definitely not insane—Cumberbatch’s incredibly sudden jumps from amusing pretenses of madness to complete gravity made that quite clear. These shifts and the surprising amount of humor also made his Hamlet seem like an actor attempting to figure out whether he is in a comedy or a tragedy, and perhaps one who sees the farce in the entire story.

The one character whose interpretation I couldn’t understand was Ophelia’s. I’m not sure what I expected, perhaps something merrier, but Siân Brooke’s interpretation was not it. She incorporated many jerky, nervous movements into Ophelia’s madness, and I thought she sang her songs too fast, almost like a recitation; I’d always imagined them slower, more carefree. Thinking back on this, however, I applaud her performance. The song speed, for example, now suggests to me the image of Ophelia as an actress, playing at being mad while really just trying to get the entire thing over with: hence the hurried quality to her singing.

She and Gertrude together also created what I think was the most moving scene in the performance: Ophelia, during her last appearance, brought out a trunk and laid it on the floor. At the end of the scene, Gertrude was left alone onstage, and she opened the trunk. Inside were photographs, as well as Ophelia’s camera. She considered it for a moment, and then gasped and sprinted offstage, following Ophelia. I had wondered when reading the play how Gertrude was able to narrate Ophelia’s death in such specific detail to Laertes—watching the play yesterday, I was given an answer.

Acting of this caliber is what made the performance such a beauty to watch. Everything was done perfectly, and even though some aspects took me by surprise, they were entirely apt. It was truly an outstanding work of art.

I would like to say, straight off the bat, that it was fabulous. It takes a lot of energy, emotion, and very fine acting to properly carry off an Arthur Miller play, and the RC Players’ production of A View From the Bridge had all three of those elements.

The set was static, as is the case with the two other Miller plays I’m familiar with. Miller is always incredibly specific about his stage sets, and the production followed his direction. What was novel about this one was that the balcony was actually closed off, providing space for the performance to extend around the audience. So, for example, as the play began, one actress hung out clothes on the balcony rail, while another actor leaned against the same rail, reading a book. Similarly, during the scene involving the immigration raid, action happened on the staircase up to the balcony, which was located behind some of the audience, and in one of the aisles behind the entire audience. Such breakages of the fourth wall are always intriguing, since each production can do something different to achieve the same effect, and they were put to very good use here, especially as they were done most noticeably at the times of greatest tumult in the play.

Costuming and makeup were similarly intriguing. The women’s costumes were quite typical of the time period (the 1950s); however, the men were sometimes dressed in jeans, which brought a slight anachronism into the performance. Granted, jeans were originally working trousers, which was most likely the desired effect here, but given that they’ve become so mainstream, it’s difficult to remember that. In terms of makeup: Miller explicitly states that Eddie and Beatrice are forty years old, and that Alfieri is fifty. Surprisingly, there appeared to be no age makeup involved in this production, the use of which would have helped emphasize the strangeness of Eddie, at age 40, falling in love with his niece Catherine, who is seventeen.

However, this was only a passing curiosity of mine, since the actors had more than enough skill to put on a fantastic show, age makeup or not. The interpretations they gave their characters were nuanced and profound. Reading the play beforehand, I took away the impression that Beatrice was simply a housewife, so overshadowed by Eddie that she could do no more to defend Catherine than a few mildly resentful comments. Emma McGlashen, who played Beatrice in the show, gave her character so much more depth. McGlashen’s Beatrice is a woman who loves her husband and her niece, who simply wants the tense undercurrents in her family to fade away, and who (a facet I didn’t see in the script) is not afraid to speak up for herself. She is the one person who sees that Catherine has grown up and encourages her to make that clear to Eddie: “You got to give him to understand he can’t give you orders no more,” she says. She is the only one that sees that Eddie’s protectiveness of Catherine is turning into passion, and she neatly sums up the tragedy in the play when she says, “You want somethin’ else, Eddie, and you can never have her.”

Catherine, as she was played by Suzanne Wdowik, is also different from how I interpreted her character in the script. When reading the play I saw Catherine as assured and self-confident, as a girl who wanted to enjoy her life. Wdowik brought to Catherine a childlike quality I didn’t anticipate, giving her a certain fragility and stripping away the self-confidence I thought was there. At the same time, especially in the second half, when Catherine becomes more directly involved in the plot, Wdowik exposed a core of steel in her that was hidden under her fragility and innocence in the first half. She is a young girl just coming into her own, deeply attached to her family and to Eddie, unsure of herself, perhaps, but able to make her choices independently and fight for them.

The third unexpected aspect of the portrayals in the show was the unexpected amount of laughter in the first half. As soon as Rodolpho entered the play and began delivering lines, the audience began to laugh: at his accent, at his manner of delivering his lines, at the astoundingly good yet humorous rendition of “Paper Doll.” I’ve been at plays before where lines that were not intended as humor became funny in the eyes of the audience. The recent production of Antigone here in Ann Arbor, directed by Ivo van Hove, experienced the same phenomenon the night I went to see it, and Antigone is even less humorous than A View From the Bridge. One of the actors mentioned in an interview, however, that this varies by audience, and that in America it happens more often that in uncomfortable situations audiences seek to relieve their discomfiture through laughter.

I think it speaks to the quality of the performance. The very fact that the show caused enough emotional upheaval that the audience was laughing before the upheaval began indicates the talent of the actors and the success they had in setting up a dissonant undercurrent without even making that explicit. I couldn’t have asked for a better first experience of A View From the Bridge.

Arthur Miller’s tragedy A View From the Bridge is a play that centers on the underlying discordances within a family. Set in New York City, Eddie Carbone lives with his wife Beatrice and their niece Catherine. Eddie has always been protective about Catherine, but when their Italian cousins come to live with them, these feelings manifest as a romantic attachment towards her. In the words of the actress portraying Catherine, the play is about “having too much love in the wrong place…It also really digs into hidden impulses in people and how those burst to the surface when tensions run high.”

It is being performed by the Residential College Players on November 13^th and 14^th at 8pm and November 15^th at 2pm. Admission is free, and it will be an awesome show!

One of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, Hamlet has just become even more so. The appearance of celebrated actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the play’s title role has brought Hamlet into the pop-culture limelight. Hamlet is a widely varying character; he can be portrayed as a prince who wants to be king, a boy in love, a vacillating and indecisive person, or anywhere in between. Cumberbatch, on the other hand, has portrayed villains, dragons, and mathematical geniuses—who knows what interpretation he will give Hamlet? That being said, Hamlet isn’t only ambiguous about Hamlet’s personality: any of the characters can be portrayed in multiple ways, and since this performance is by London’s National Theatre, we’re practically guaranteed a nuanced, thought-provoking interpretation of the play. I expect it to be an entirely worthwhile experience.

The play will be broadcasted on Sunday, November 15, at 7pm in the Michigan Theater. Tickets can be bought at the League ticket office or through the UMS website.