Review: Hong Kong enjoys a stripped-down Hamlet Globe to Globe
Funny, moving, but somewhat rushed, Shakespeare's classic drama loses some of the beauty of its language in this touring show celebrating the 450th anniversary of the playwright’s birth
London’s Globe Theatre is back with Hamlet Globe to Globe – a production created to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth by performing his most famous play in every country in the world. Hong Kong is its latest stop on the two-year tour, with the company arriving after dates in Myanmar, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea.
In response to the demands of such a huge tour and such diversity of venues, director Dominic Dromgoole has stripped production values to the barest of bare bones. Costumes are simple modern clothes, the set consists of a curtain plus a few chests and planks which can be assembled in different ways to represent anything from a throne to a grave.
Except for the actor who plays Hamlet, the cast of less than a dozen switches continually between multiple roles.
The text has been cut back to produce a taut, energetic version of the play that focuses on plot and action rather than poetry or philosophy. On this level it succeeds well – the characters (minor roles as well as major) are vividly drawn, the story clear and the pace dynamic.
The comic passages are funny (Hamlet abounds in great one-liners as well as soliloquies) and the most human moments of the drama (Ophelia’s madness and death, her brother’s grief), are moving.
For such a production, the troupe of travelling players who visit Elsinore are an obvious key theme – the performance begins with the company performing a rousing shanty about roving the seas – and the play within a play is one of the most effective sequences.
This concept makes perfect sense for a project aimed at such a wide range of audiences and offers lively, entertaining theatre. On the downside, it does less than justice to the play’s more profound aspects and the first half especially feels rushed.