Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 8 March 2017

Hamlet again - the fifth since I started this blog, and I think the twentieth stage production I have seen (plus three films). This time, Robert Icke directs Andrew Scott as Hamlet, Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude, Angus Wright as Claudius, Jessica Brown Findlay as Ophelia, Peter Wight as Polonius, Luke Thompson as Laertes, David Rintoul as the Ghost and the Player-King and Elliot Barnes-Worrell as Horatio, with sets and costumes designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

A modern Hamlet with video surveillance cameras first alerting the guards to the Ghost's appearance, TV newsreel footage of the old king's funeral at the beginning, and Hamlet's at the end (a really nice touch to have the running text at the foot of the screen in Danish), and a camera always ready to film coverage of public royal occasions such as the beginning of the marriage feast, the Royal party attending the play and the fencing match, and Claudius making various public announcements. 

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 5 March 2016

Chekhov's play has been adapted by the director Robert Icke so that its setting is less obviously Russian (Vanya is 'Uncle Johnnie') and also later than the nineteenth century (there is a telephone, and electric light in the house). It features Paul Rhys as John (Vanya), Jessica Brown Findlay as Sonya, Tobias Menzies as Michael (Astrov, the doctor), and Susan Wooldridge as Maria (John's mother and Sonya's grandmother), with Hilton McRae as Alexander (the professor) and Vanessa Kirby as his second wife Elena, Richard Lumsden as Cartwright (Telyeghin) and Ann Queensberry as the nanny. The production is designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

On a raised platform of wooden boards, with posts at each corner supporting a black roof or canopy, there are a few props, and an old nanny and a visiting doctor. Conversation is desultory, the old woman offering tea and complaining about the disruption to the routines of the household, the doctor absorbed with signs of his slow disintegration into mediocrity. Slowly, the whole platform revolves, while a neighbour and the members of an ill-assorted family appear and disappear. The management of the estate, which normally occupies Sonya and her uncle Johnnie, has lapsed during the visit of Sonya's father and stepmother who seem to have exerted a fatal lassitude simply by being there, city folk ill at ease in the country. But John is attracted to Elena, his brother-in-law's new wife (Sonya's mother was his sister), and this adds to the simmering tensions.

Oresteia

by Aeschylus in a new version created by Robert Icke

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 27 June 2015

'Oresteia', directed by Robert Icke and designed by Hildegard Bechtler, features Lia Williams as Klytemnestra, Angus Wright as Agamemnon (and Aegisthus), Luke Thompson as Orestes and Jessica Brown Findlay as Elektra. It is the first in a series of Greek plays at the Almeida in 2015.

The 'new version' is definitely a 'version' and not merely a translation of the Greek text. The original trilogy ('Agamemnon', 'Choephori' or 'Libation Bearers', and 'Eumenides' or 'Kindly Ones') has in effect been turned into a tetralogy by dramatising an incident mentioned in 'Agamemnon' as a fully-fledged action in its own right. Looked at another way, Euripides's play 'Iphigenia at Aulis' has been adapted into an extended prologue to Aeschylus's trilogy.