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The California Shakespeare Company (CSC) will offer a new production of William Shakespeare‘s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Jan. 12-27 at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center.
The play stars Jesse Fair as Prince Hamlet and Rose Hunter as Ophelia, and is directed by the company’s artistic director William H. Fisher.
Here is how the CSC frames the production: “As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father’s death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.”
This should be very interesting. It has always been perfectly true that — in Act I, Scene 1 — as Bernardo, Marcellus and Horatio await the ghost, they pass the time discussing the current situation in their country:
That the Danish blacksmiths and shipwrights are working night and day, manufacturing arms and building ships; that the late king (and present ghost), Hamlet’s father (also named Hamlet) killed King Fortinbras of Norway in a mano-a-mano; that Fortinbras’s son, also named Fortinbras, is currently putting together an army of rough mercenaries; and that the present Danish king, Claudius, is perceived throughout the Baltic region as a drunk, a sensualist, and a weakling — that is to say, a guy with a target painted on his back.
But, in every Hamlet I have ever seen, the international situation is soon overshadowed by the advent of the ghost and the launching of Hamlet’s project for revenge, and does not come back to the fore until Prince Fortinbras shows up in the last act to bury the bodies and claim the vacant throne.
Now, if Fisher wants to maintain this brink-of-war atmosphere throughout the play, he will get little help from the text, beyond the first couple of scenes, but there are plenty of possibilities in the staging that don’t require rewrites.
For example, in Nagisa Oshima‘s 1976 film, Realm of the Senses, set in Japan in the late 1930s, the amorous main characters rarely leave their house, but in one wordless scene, the male protagonist is shown walking down a wet street with his hands tucked into his kimono.
A line of soldiers in full battle kit marches past him, and he guiltily averts his eyes. We are instantly reminded that, outside the lovers’ “realm,” Japan has conquered Manchuria and is about to invade the Malay Peninsula before attacking Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.
Anyway, this is a fascinating, and completely valid, new approach to a venerable classic, which has suffered many indignities in modern attempts to “update” it, or make it more “relevant.” Fisher’s new insights were obviously generated from within Shakespeare’s poetry.
Hamlet performs at 7 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $25 adults, $22 seniors and students, and $18 children 12 and under, and may be purchased by phone at 805-583-7900, or online at www.simi-arts.org.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.