New at Theatre Notes

Hamlet, plus a guest essay on community theatre by Daniel Keene

Hamlet

Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Directed by Oscar Redding, DDT Studio, 515 High Street, Northcote. La Tragedie d'Hamlet, directed by Peter Brook. DVD, Agat Films 2001.

On the face of it, it may seem very unfair to compare these two versions of Hamlet . One is a filmed production by one of the greatest theatre directors of the past century, created in Brook's gorgeous Paris base, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord; the other an exemplary example of poor theatre, put on by a young Melbourne director in a shop front in High Street, Northcote.

As it happens, it is not unfair; theatre is a great leveller. Perhaps for similar reasons - a certain straightforwardness in approaching Shakespeare - both are remarkable for their clarity, and they share a great text and remarkable actors. Where Redding's production lacks Brook's exquisite aesthetic polish, it gains in robust irreverence and visceral power. But what strikes me most is how both these productions spin the focus on this most protean of texts, to reveal a Hamlet in whose body itself turns the sword of politics.

The great Shakespearean critic Jan Kott says of Hamlet that it is a play that absorbs its times. So there are, among many others, the Romantic Hamlet of the 19th century, wanly melancholic; the mid-Century Hamlet, which Kott particularly documented, in which interpretation leans on the pitiless wheel of power; and now this 21st century Hamlet, at once sensuous and full of loathing, raging against the mortal trappings of his flesh.

Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/

Small Companies and Community Theatre

"But of course money isn't everything; great theatre can be made with very little, as it is in Australia, over and over again. It's simply a pity that it can't be made a little easier . . . but for that to happen, you’d have to have a government that actually cared about culture and not the gang of moral and cultural bankrupts that are in power at the moment, who seem determined to silence creative voices and reduce us all to frightened, well behaved children. You'd also have to have an audience that felt empowered, that felt the theatre was something important, and that it belonged to them and meant something to them."

Last night, playwright Daniel Keene delivered the keynote address for graduation students at Swinburne University of Technology's Small Companies and Community Theatre Course. His experiences working as a writer in French theatre give a different slant to the possibilities of theatre's place in the community. For the full speech, click on...

http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/

All the best

Alison

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