Theatre Review: Hamlet

Hamlet

National Theatre, London

15/10/2015

Directed by Lyndsey Turner

Produced by Sonia Friedman

Written by William Shakespeare

Review Based on National Theatre Live Streaming 2024

Review by Noor Zohdy

Displaced from time, from a distinct historical moment, this production of Hamlet spoke from a world of relentless woe and drama of cinematic and apocalyptic heights. The suffocation of the mortal frame, the proximity of madness and sanity, the desperation and powerlessness of mortal conscience were embodied by Hamlet (Benedict Cumberbatch) with a poignancy reminiscent of Gothic moral drama. Yet, what truly transfixed me, what stayed vivid in my mind’s eye, was the performance of Ophelia (Siân Brooke). Strangely, I do not believe I ever fully comprehended the acute tragedy of her story, of her abandonment; when I thought of Hamlet, I thought of Hamlet’s great speeches, of his madness, of his sanity. Siân Brooke’s performance as Ophelia has made even the name ring differently in my mind.

Perceptive and curious, Brooke’s Ophelia is seen from her earliest moments peering through a camera. She leans upon the abandoned dinner table, transfixed by an abandoned cup; yet, we never hear the camera click. She is interrupted every time she finds something through her lens; first it is her brother warning her against trusting Hamlet, then it is her father scolding her for associating with him. These harsh, grating voices of male authority force her away from her creative subject, and the picture is left untaken. Her relationship with her brother is keenly drawn; there is a beautiful moment when they play the piano together. Yet, never before did I realise how completely she is abandoned by even him. 'Tis in my memory lock'd, / And you yourself shall keep the key of it’, sounds through her words to him like a promise, a promise he will break. When he discovers her madness, his proclamation towards revenge ripples uncannily the words of Hamlet. In this moment in the play, Laertes (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) turns his back to Ophelia, abandoning her side at the piano, turning to face Claudias (Ciarán Hinds) on the other side of the stage before they leave, together. Only the two women are left. Ophelia is left, in her tattered black dress, torn hair, and grief-stricken face. She looks to the audience with an unforgettable look of complete and utter emptiness, endless and unspeakable despair. In this performance, Ophelia knew of Hamlet’s feigned madness; there is a moment when she helps him dress in the costume he will use in a ‘mad’ scene moments later. When he violently confronts her as she returns his letters, he pointedly shouts at the door where he knows (and she presumably told him) Claudius and Polonius (Jim Norton) are listening.

But these relentless, jarring, violent voices suffocate her. When Hamlet, however feigned, mercilessly shouts at her as she returns his letters, her look of helpless heartbreak shows her faltering faith as it begins to crack. Who can she believe, who can she trust? The advisements of her brother and father, the entreaties of promised love? When she discovers her father’s death, kneeling on the floor, her hands soaked in his blood, her scream, bleeding through the stage sound-effects, her face haunting through the dim lights, sent chills up my spine. In her final scene, when her brother has left her side by the piano, she sits there a moment, alone. From the second half of the play, the pristine castle is strewn with debris, blackened-ashen fragments that mount through the corridor to the back of the stage. The desolate, destroyed Ophelia in the desolate, destroyed castle brought to my mind the forgotten souls of war, the Ophelias aimlessly sacrificed and betrayed by martial conflict, forgotten in light of someone else’s revenge. I recalled her final gaze to the words of Fortinbras (Sergo Vares) at the play’s end: ‘such a sight as this / Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss’. She rises from the piano and stumbles through the rubble, walking down the corridor, turning towards a blinding light shining from her right. Breathtakingly stumbling; her silhouette tripping against the light as she vanishes, to the end never quite falling, half-conscious, she vanishes through the white nothingness. Gertrude (Anastasia Hille) opens the trunk Ophelia left behind. She finds innumerable still-lifes, candid black and white images fall through her hands; hauntingly, tragically, she finds the camera and looks to the empty corridor. She runs after her, but it is too late.

The impossibility for imaginative hope, for Ophelia’s vision, for her perceptive wonder, is severed by violence, by abandonment, by betrayal renting the very ties by which her keen sensibilities were netted. There is no place for Ophelia in the world of Hamlet, a world of aimless violence and forgotten hopes, colourless visions and blackened promises. A death half on-stage, half off-stage, Ophelia wanders sightlessly like a wanderer from a unseen dream. The piano keys are left unplayed, the image is left untaken. It’s almost like she had never been there at all.