Escaping Hamlet
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Andy Jordan Productions and Teatro dei Borgia
Metro
It's not quite Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, but Teatro Dei Borgia's riff on Shakespeare's most celebrated tragedy is a thing of heady, fearsome enchantment. Natalia Capra's script sets the action in a Denmark blighted by alcoholism and insanity, not so much rotten as putrid.
Its protagonist Kate is a Danish drama student who finds herself trapped in the creeping gravity of Claudius's court. She's not alone in this; slugging vodka desperately, the wild-eyed younger generation – Hamlet, Laertes and Ophelia – all talk constantly of escape.
With better intentions and in better balance than Shakespeare's characters, they drink because they nonetheless feel the crushing hand of tragedy pressing down on them. No matter how hard they try to change things, they can't gain enough momentum to break through the absolutes of Shakespeare's plot – only Kate is immune from the grim inevitability of the conclusion.
To this end, Giuseppe Avallone's direction is awash with magnificently haunting flourishes. Vignettes from the original play unfold mysteriously in glowing alcoves, away from the main action, while Charlie Palmer's chipper, upbeat lead is literally shadowed by other incarnations of himself.
Though occasionally self-indulgent, Escaping Hamlet is for the most part a whimsical, tragic postmodern fairy tale that thrusts Shakespeare's characters through the looking glass and into a terrifying, beautiful wonderland.
23 August 2007
