Brave new bard
Hamlet, you say? Yes, that story again. How many ways are there to tell a story so famous and familiar it feels as if it’s been done to death? And since it’s a notoriously complex and difficult play, why bother even trying?
Undeterred by the baggage and sky-high expectations that come with it, versatile stage actress and first-time director Ana Abad Santos–Bitong makes a bold choice in staging perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest work for Repertory Philippines: setting the story not in the medieval past but in some hypothetical post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is a land “ravaged by war,” she says in her notes, and Hamlet’s Denmark is a “tribal society struggling to survive.”
Though it’s often refreshing to find the Bard’s works challenged by unconventional takes, the decision to forgo the “men in tights” approach comes with risks. The kind that comes with Bitong’s concept seems twofold: the possibility that the staging will descend into hokeyness (Mad Max meets Hamlet the Dane!), and that the transposition will reveal itself to be inappropriate.
Does it work? Actually, yes. For one thing, this production is visually compelling, sometimes even arresting. It catches your eye from the opening tableau, all the characters on stage posed against a red backdrop like an irradiated horizon, shrouded in mist. A lot of the credit goes to set designer Denis Lagdameo, who does much with platforms, a ramp, rock, and sand. Composer and sound designer Jethro Joaquin’s eerie, atmospheric music and sound design evokes an emptiness that reaches far beyond the confines of the performing area. But what is most impressive are the costumes. Designed by Faust Peneyra, they may not look awfully new, but they are intricately crafted. Layers and texture are the keywords: long coats with fur lapels, double belts, leather aviator caps, boots, shiny buttons, gloves, studs and straps, thick necklaces, browns and blacks and grays. Peneyra gets a lot of mileage out of safety goggles, worn both by Hamlet (in the amusing scene in which he twits the clueless Polonius, Ophelia’s father) and the traveling actors (who look like a cross between monks and clowns).
The weapons — curved swords, knives, spears, sticks — also by Lagdameo, give an odd feel to the mix. If the costumes are vaguely Mad Max, the weapons are Conan the Barbarian. Still, the wonder is that this whimsical combination works. The weapons look real and heavy. A blade sharpened with a whetstone makes a shrill, metallic scraping sound. A broad sword dropped bangs and clatters.
As for the performances, the standout is easily Cris Villonco’s Ophelia. I’ve always found Ophelia, the woman Hamlet loves who goes mad, to be a thankless role, and it doesn’t help if she is turned weak and demure (as, say, Helena Bonham Carter does in the 1990 Zeffirelli film version starring Mel Gibson). Why would Hamlet be attracted to such a girl? I much prefer a stronger, more vibrant interpretation such as those by Kate Winslet (in Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film) and Julia Stiles (in Michael Almereyda’s 2000 film starring Ethan Hawke and set in Manhattan).
Villonco’s Ophelia is girlish and sprightly, jostling her brother playfully before he leaves to continue his studies (he leaves her a fan knife as a souvenir), but also a dutiful daughter. She reluctantly complies with her father’s order that she stay away from Hamlet whom she loves, a decision that clearly tears at her. When they confront each other in the eavesdropping scene, they clinch briefly and desperately, and after Hamlet throws her to the ground Villonco goes into a moving soliloquy (“O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”) and shows Ophelia’s hold of her splintering heart to be increasingly fragile. When she finally walks onstage insane, twigs that she takes for flowers in one hand and a knife in the other, our hearts go out to this lost soul, one of several victims that Hamlet’s quest for justice will strew in his path.
The casting choices tend to the youthful side, and in the case of Joel Trinidad as Claudius, perhaps too youthful. Nonetheless, he cuts an imposing figure as the usurper king (the red band across his eyes is a good touch), someone who could conceivably take the crown and command the respect of his peers yet is susceptible to the prick and sting of conscience.
And what of Hamlet himself? Is there any role in Shakespeare more demanding of an actor? Niccolo Manahan carried Rep’s Love’s Labour’s Lost on the strength of his breezy charm. As Hamlet he puts on the requisite melancholy, but he isn’t as able to convey the keen intelligence that can’t help but feed on its own thoughts. His take on the “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy, which features mightily jagged turns of thought and feeling, lacks some fire. But there is a moment in his “To be or not to be” speech when, sitting on a rock in a corner of the stage, he conveys a genuine fear of the “undiscovered country” beyond this life. In other scenes he flashes glints of a mercurial nature that is by turns comic and cruel. His is a Hamlet we can believe in.
If the production succeeds as spectacle, it doesn’t quite get there on the level of ideas. True, the change in setting makes the contrast between the community and the cerebral hero even more pronounced. An intellectual has no place in this society, and this Hamlet is indeed a man “out of joint.”
But the transposition raises questions that aren’t answered. If the land is “ravaged by war,” why do Laertes and Hamlet study at university? Where exactly is the nunnery Hamlet wishes Ophelia to go? Polonius orders Ophelia not to consort with Hamlet because he is royalty and above their station, a prince “out of thy star,” yet what meaning does social stratification have in this post-apocalyptic world? There is also a strange lack of Christian iconography: there are no crosses or crucifixes, yet Christian ideas permeate the play. Bring the body of Polonius “to the chapel,” Claudius tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Laertes wishes to cut Hamlet’s throat “i’the church.” Claudius falls to his knees to pray while calling for the aid of angels. The ghost of Hamlet’s father suffers in purgatory. Christian belief seems alive still, yet there is no sign of it.
What does it mean to hold on so strongly to such a belief system — in sin, death, and the afterlife — in this context? The text is pared down greatly — the proceedings take little more than two hours — yet many of the Christian references, and more importantly, its Christian sensibility, remain intact. Perhaps the starkness of the overall production design hints that such faith becomes meaningless in a world teetering on the brink of extinction, but I would have wanted the implications teased out.
And yet, though these are things the production might have explored had it aspired to greatness, it is a good one nonetheless. This is not a slight. Considering how hard it is to tell this old, knotty story in a new, refreshing way, this Hamlet by Repertory Philippines has very much to commend it.
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A quibble about the program: The four paragraphs in the “about the author” page are lifted verbatim from Wikipedia without citation. Also, a synopsis of a mere five sentences is bound to be sketchy at best, but the one in the program hardly mentions the events of the play, which a good synopsis does. Surely there will be viewers who don’t know the details of the story and would be grateful to have a handy guide with them. It is also strange how the write-ups of the performers differ in style and tone. A scrupulous copy editor might have given them, as well as the director’s notes, a more uniform shape.
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