Michael Benz was a superlative Hamlet — within the limits of the kind of acting used
Dear friends and readers,
Jim and went out last night to see the London Globe company act Hamlet at our Folger Shakespeare Library. Like last time (8 summers ago now, in the Globe Theater itself in London where we were groundlings), the company’s way of doing the plays left me cold. They again enacted actors acting the parts. For me the result is too stylized.
The dress this time reminded me of the way people costume the rude mechanicals in Midsummer’s Night’s Dream and before the play started two actors, one playing Polonius (Christopher Saul) and one Claudius (Dickon Tyrell, a superbly effective presence even in stylized patterns), mingled with the audience. They were people like us you see, their costumes not so different from ours. The era imitated was 1940s mostly, with Miranda Foster having her hair in a snood, buns on top of her head, seamed stockings, 1940s pump shows. One problem was, why 1940s? This choice of era was not addressed. Like the Shenandoah play, the company do it in the light. Minimal props. I loved all this in a way. And I can’t really complain that they depend wholly on the lines spoken beautifully in a talk way. That means you’ve got to listen — and you appreciate the words both how they still speak to us and how they are Elizabethan in feel, outlook, nuance. But during the intermission I heard people talking about how hard it was for them to keep up, to follow. Those who had read the play rejoiced. I’ve read it many times so I could follow. I loved the folk dancing before and aft. They do get across the comic moments of Shakespeare’s even most pessimistic of plays.
A couple of the younger actors were weak. There were but 8 of them, lots of thoughtful doubling. Tom Lawrence most notably as Horatio stood out as somehow embodying a quintessential English Renaissance player look. The actors playing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern came in with sheepish comic looks, carrying suitcases, tennis rackets, vacation stuff. The whole feel alluded to Stoppard’s play — so the aesthetic control could be broken to allude to another art world.
But finally I prefer modern psychological enactment because I was not moved until near the end. The acting keeps me at a distance: the pace is too quick, and the gestures somehow slightly frozen, graceful in frenetism would be the way I’d characterize the Hamlet-Gertrude hard encounter. The American Shakespeare Company players (formerly Shenandoah express) do their plays using modern psychological mimesis with direct connections to our lives and norms today. I also much preferred the more abridged Hamlet we saw this summer: this Globe version was shortened too, lines sweated, here and there a speech omitted).
Go see it as an attempt to bridge the past into the present.
For a list of the company, director and notes, see Globe on Tour with Hamlet (they come to the Folger).
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Murray B: I’m afraid I’d have to get closer before I could sense that greater distance–and, my mind often wanders as well.
Me: Yes you are not allowed to let your mind wander. Each moment the words are coming out. It’s demanding. Surely in Shakespeare’s period people were not all that different from us.
Dear Ellen (if I may),
I was in the house last night as well, and agree with your assessment. I wanted to thank you for so kindly mentioning our company, here and in your other entries. I know that the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express’s name is gorgeous and that it is difficult to shift to the less lovely new moniker, but I wonder if you could help us with getting the word out about our work even more than you already do by citing our new name, too? Just want more people to associate our company with your lovely reviews. I hope you can make it down soon–Our Two Gents (directed by Professor Cohen) is so much fun one almost forgets it is an early play.
I’ve linked it in but I was working from memory — and I remember the company as the Shenandoah express. I’ll change the name on the blog itself. We do enjoy your company very much. It’s a long drive for us so we have to choose which ones to go to or we’d go to them all 🙂 Ellen
Dear Ellen,
So glad you make it when you can. I sympathize about the drive. We made it up and back yesterday. ouch.
Take care!
Sarah
Ellen, could you be more specific about your description of the performance style in this production of Hamlet?
I have seen several productions at the Globe and also at the Blackfriars in Staunton, VA, and I never thought to distinguish their house acting styles as all that different.
Both — in my experience — feature emotionally expressive actors, physical and verbal engagement with the audience, and — to my mind and heart — celebration of the theatrical experience.
The Blackfriars does do a bit more with audience participation than they do at the Globe, what with people sitting onstage in the performance space who are given brief roles in the action. But I sometimes find that annoying because it feels vaguely gimmicky.
So I’m wondering if the “distanced way of acting” you describe is unique to this production from the Globe, or a different way of describing the prevailing Globe house style of performance.
JNW. Ficino
In reply to Prof Wall,
I admit I’ve gone to the Globe twice only and that was a few years ago; this is the third time I’ve seen the company. The other two times were in summer and one does not see as well from the ground, especially as the stage is high up with respect to the ground. I was not as comfortable watching as in a Folger seat. We were to the side downstairs and saw and heard well.
But I remembered that the two times I went in London I was not keen or not somehow deeply aroused by the plays. I loved the dancing and the place but the play itself somehow didn’t work. This time close up and without distractions I felt I began to understand what’s different or distinctive about the Globe. I now think the actors are playing Elizabethan players acting Shakespeare — even if they had (well some of them had) 1940s clothes on. They are distanced from the audience because they are not enacting the characters directly. I’ve read (as I’m sure you have) that the present natural way of acting only emerged slowly, beginning perhaps sometime in the 18th century. These actors were not over-melodramatic but they were not playing their roles with full play of feature let loose. The stylization I speak of is an intense control which turns what would be say a look of neurotic distress (on Gertrude’s face) into a grimace that feels mask-like. It worked best for comic moments — comedy does depend on artificial presentation of the self. Some of the actors (the young man doing Hamlet, the seasoned actor doing Claudius) were able somehow to project depth of emotion through the mask-like presentations, but others were not; still others really seemed to be quintessential imitations of archetypal Poloniuses, or Horatios. My critique is that they are not acting expressively. They are not bringing out of their peculiar particular individual selves the emotions needed but imitating some sort of pre-conceived aesthetic schematics for each turn in their trajectories.
One problem with the strong reliance on the meaning of the lines to provide the inner nuance and the pace they kept up was you could not let your mind wander for a moment. If you did, you lost out.
This particular performance didn’t have the players come out among the audience much.
The Shenandoah players don’t do this at all — even if they have minimal props and scenery and have to cope with starting and ending the play and creating a realm of magic without turning the lights off and using a curtain.
I had two comments where other people in the audience or who have seen the Globe players agreed with me and understood what I mean.
What is meant by theatrical experience is wide and varied — and there is no single standard.
Maybe what I’m saying is a different way of describing the standard Globe performance. I meant to bring out something I had not seen brought out by anyone who I’ve read describing the Globe style.
E.M.
I am thankful to Ellen for her further reflections on the subject of acting styles at the Globe and at the Blackfriars in Staunton, VA.
I very interested at the moment in the subject of acting styles in unamplified performance spaces.
I would be grateful for suggestions of good recent discussions of early modern acting styles, especially in terms of the relationship between staged characterization and the kind of realistic, intimate performances we are now accustomed to as a result of the movies, TV, and amplified stage performances.
I am working on developing a coherent view of early modern preaching styles, related clearly to acting styles. I’m engaged in a digital humanities project to recreate the experience of early modern preaching at Paul’s Cross.
One cal learn more here:
http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com/
There are sound clips on the blog, and on our website here:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jnwall/vpcp.html
The sound clips are from a performance of Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon for November 5th, 1622. Ben Crystal, the actor doing this performance, was
asked to perform with a concern for audibility in a space approximately 120
feet by 150 feet, facing a crowd of perhaps 5000 people.
The acoustic engineers working with me on this project say that Ben gets his performance just about perfect for those conditions, especially in terms of the pacing of his performance.
The reactions I get from people who listen to him simply as an example of sermon delivery find the slow, deliberate, and lacking in immediacy and the
communication of feeling.
Both the folks at the Globe and the folks at Staunton take pride on “original performance” practices, hence my interest in Ellen’s comments.
JNW