Directors’ Interpretations Flashcards
(21 cards)
Lazarus production
Older generation aren’t present - voiceovers instead.
Idea of outer powerful forces / God-like parents who dictate their life.
Younger generation as gathering in symbolic ‘group therapy sessions’ - show the destructive impact of older generation = condemned them all to tragedy.
Richard Icke, In Act 3 Scene 1…
While Ophelia give back her letters, Andrew Scott feels her coller for microphones - surveillance
Inner conflict: Tries to kiss her violently during ‘painting’ lines
Richard Icke, In Act 3 Scene 2…
While play is going on, the characters are in the audience, cameras in their face - SUPER METATHATRE
Michelle Terry at the Globe
She plays Hamlet, and when under the antic disposition assumes a chaotic clown costume - playing the role of fool and using humour to make poignant points about society and life
Richard Icke, In Act 3 Scene 3…
Instead of just making an excuse, the audience is shown Hamlet Shaking holding gun - inability to do it / pull trigger on Claudius (not just because he is praying)
Richard Icke Ending
no definitive sense of damnation = everyone goes behind the gauze / curtain together, no differentiation between characters
KENNETH BRANAUGH
Act 3 Scene 1
Hamlet dragging Ophelia around by her hair in ‘get thee to a nunnery’ - very violent and cruel - impassioned and violent action / doesn’t actually love her?
Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film, having ‘to be or not to be’ in front of the spread of mirrored walls, tender, introspection into highly self-conscious performance
RSC / DAVID TENNANT
Claudius & Ghost both played by Patrick Stewart (shared manipulation & corruption)
2008 performance portrayed Hamlet as “more than up to his task” (Shakespeare Bulletin 2008)
Theme of Paranoia is so significant that…
Peter Brook called his film ‘Qui Est Là.’
RSC - GREGORY DORAN 2008
The production was filmed for DVD and broadcast on BBC Two in 2009. In the film, the theme of observation continues as the action is occasionally viewed as images on a CCTV monitor, and Hamlet films the players’ performance with a Super-8 camera.
RSC Set
In Robert Jones’ set, weighed down with enormous sparkling chandeliers, all the action was reflected in the glossy black mirror-like floor and the huge full-height mirrors at the back of the stage, which shattered dramatically when Polonius was shot.
- detached and cold environment as home (spacing between characters in 1.2 - very separate)
RSC Ophelia
Spends much of A1S3 on her knees - being spoken down to
Eddie Izzard
Ghost as green spotlight
Marcellus and Horacio same character
Claudius in scene 2 addresses audience-sense that we are his subjects
R&G as puppet hands
First soliloquy steps off main
I call you “king?” Separate
Clinical / mental asylum notes
Door opening at the end
Self-centred
Thomas Ostermeier’s 2008,
Berlin production was set around a pit of soil, turned to which served as a kind of omniscient graveyard into which Hamlet flopped. During the second scene, the same actress played both Gertrude and Ophelia, turning the two women into one another on stage in the same way Hamlet does in his mind & speech.
In Germany…
Hamlet is commonly translated as “fratricide punished” since 1782
The Norwegian Element
A 1676 quarto of Hamlet, known as the players quarto, reduces the Norwegian element: the account of Fortinbrasses revenge in 1.1 is truncated and the embassy to Norway, as well as his parade across Denmark on his way to Poland were omitted = downplays the international quality of the tragedy = this move presaged a related trend that dominated performance into the 19th century: a concentration of the betrayal of Hamlet’s emotions over the political condition
Olivier and Zeffirelli films omit Fortinbras and 4.4 entirely.
Laurence Olivier …. in 3.4
emphasised how Hamlet was psychologically fractured by Oedipal desire in his 1937 stage performance, and emphasise this in his 1948 film intensifying, the Freudian sensibilities with camerawork and setting 3.4 in Gertrude’s bedroom
Hamlet be literally possessed by the ghost of his father in 1.5, choking out the ghost’s lines.
Richard Eyre’s 1980 production at the Royal Court in London
portrayed Hamlet as truly mad,
Mark Rylance, in 1989 production for the RSC portrayed Hamlet as truly mad, particularly when he delivered ‘to be or not to be’ in his pyjamas, something emphasised by the off- kilter windows and walls, which was meant to simulate the atmosphere of a mental institution
childlike
In 2015, Lyndsey Turner directed Benedict Cumberbatch: for the scene with the players, he cheerfully wore the costume with a toy soldier and maned a toy castle = CHILDLIKE
sexualisation of ophelia even in madness
Ophelia takes off her dress and stands in her undergarments in RSC Production 2025 Rupert Goold
