Starring Hu Jun, modern Chinese take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet transcends geography and culture

Veteran Chinese actor Hu Jun, whose latest screen credits include the highly acclaimed Shadow (2018) by director Zhang Yimou, has come a long way since he played a gravedigger in a stage production of Hamlet in 1990. But now he is returning to the Shakespearean classic, playing the lead in theatre director Li Liuyi’s contemporary take called The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Will Story of Yanxi Palace team’s new drama survive China TV purge? The production will come to Hong Kong in March as part of this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival. The role means a great deal to the award-winning actor. “It’s the biggest honour for any theatre actor to play Hamlet,” Hu says. “The role is like a benchmark. Getting it means the actor has superb theatrical skills.” That he gets to perform opposite his wife, Lu Fang, and for the first time his 17-year-old daughter Mia too is an extra bonus. “[Lu] plays the two roles of the Danish queen [Gertrude] and Ophelia. It is a valuable chance for her,” Hu says. “It is the second time for us, as a couple, to be on the same stage together. For my daughter’s role as a singer, it was added on [later] by director Li after he heard her singing at the table when we dined together in a restaurant. It was great fun to perform together as a family.” The Tragedy of Hamlet reunites not only the couple on stage but also another stage veteran, Pu Cunxin, who played Hamlet in the 1990 production directed by Lin Zhaohua. Pu will take on the roles of Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet’s father in the current show. Li has worked with Hu and Lu before, directing them both in the stage production of Jun Yong Lie Che (Military Train) in 1995. The setting for The Tragedy of Hamlet has celestial undertones that accentuate the transcendental emotions portrayed by the actors: small lights dot the black backdrop like stars and a sun-like globe hovers over the cast on a circular monolith that rises above the stage. Li says complicated stage set-ups and intricate props are unnecessary for Hamlet as what counts most on stage is the performance. “The [design of the stage] transcends geography and culture. [I wanted] the actors to be put in a bigger spatial and temporal setting,” he explains. Neither is there much music other than Mia’s singing and the live performance of a jinghu, a Chinese bowed string instrument. “Jinghu music has religious rhythms and [quintessentially] Chinese sounds. It is combined with Mia Hu’s angelic voice. She has great singing talent,” Li says. Mia says she has never had any formal singing training, instead learning a number of vocal techniques from her grandfather Hu Baoshan, a famous baritone singer in China. Still studying in secondary school, she says it is “too early to decide on my future, but I want to follow in my parents’ footsteps in pursing acting”. Li has worked with Lu in a dozen theatre productions – including Spring in a Small Town and King Lear – and says the actress is both innovative and versatile. He adds that to play both the queen and Ophelia in Hamlet, Lu needs to have great emotional range. “The queen experiences her husband’s death before marrying her husband’s brother. She undergoes this large mental swing. Ophelia, meanwhile, is an innocent girl … It’d be great if Hu and Lu could channel their [real-life] romantic feelings for each other onto the stage.” The Royal Shakespeare Company wants to complete the stupendous feat of translating more than 30 Shakespeare plays into Chinese in a decade Li Liuyi Lu Fang says she relishes the challenge of playing the two roles. “The characters have lots of commonalties … they both love Hamlet, but also suffer much turmoil [because of him].” The Tragedy of Hamlet is the second collaboration between Li’s studio, the Beijing LiLiuyi Theatre Studio, and Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), after last year’s King Lear. It is the result of the RSC starting its Shakespeare Folio Translation Project in 2013, which aims to translate Shakespeare’s repertoire into Chinese with a team of writers and translators. “The RSC wants to complete the stupendous feat of translating more than 30 Shakespeare plays into Chinese in a decade,” Li says. “For Hamlet’s translation, poetic but vernacular language is spoken. In the old practice, translators used to use archaic language, which the audience didn’t understand. Shakespeare’s plays were written for both royalty and commoners so people of all walks of life should be able to enjoy them.” The director – known for turning traditional Chinese theatre on its head in works such as his Heroine trilogy – adds that the philosophical dilemmas and problems faced by people 400 years ago are similar to those of their contemporary peers. “With wars, refugees and famines blighting the current age, the modern world is chaotic due to the lack of [human] wisdom,” he says. “Both world leaders and ordinary people need rationality, morality and wisdom – values Shakespearean plays portray – to live life.” The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, March 7 and 8 at 7.30pm, March 9 at 2.30pm