Word: hamlets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that this is a bad Hamlet, by any means. On the contrary, it is a very nice one. It is well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-bred, Every word and action appears carfully premeditated and skillfully executed. When not a word of a play holds any surprises to many in the audience, its production may all too easily become a genteel ritual in propitiation of the gods of Culture. The Old Vic personnel do not fight against this tendency; they positively embrace it. Only at a few points is anything so unseemly as a spontaneous emotion allowed...
...black background, and the queen's bedroom is an ottoman and a great scarlet-canopied bed against the all-prevasive black. The scenes of hurried conspiracy after the Play Scene are done mostly on a bare, black stage swept with light across the front, as if to show that Hamlet had succeeded in rending the (over) elaborate facade of cheerful, orderly civilization that Claudius (with the help of Mr. Benthall) had built around his own rotting soul. This stroke of austerity is the most meaningful--and least pretty--scenic effect that Miss Crud-das has contrived. By some...
...that some of the external plushery was intentionally put in for an ironic contrast with the agonized struggle between Hamlet and Claudius. But the struggle never seems really agonized, and much of the plushery simply gets in the way. Gordon Jacob's music, for instance, is too much and too pretty--it was not a good idea to use a harp in the ghost music. The Play Scene, for another instance, ends in a very ecstasy of lighting and musical effects which succeed in diverting attention from what is actually going on: you can't see the forest...
John Neville's pallid Hamlet is very much in tune with the production--not a hair is out of place. Mr. Neville plays not passion and fury, but sweet, mild melancholy. Hamlet's brilliant sarcasm, which should flash like lightning to relieve his overcharged soul, pales into insignificance; the clouds that hang on the soul of this Hamlet are the merest, most forgettable wisps...
...however, must bear some responsibilty here. If an actor is to play the Fishmonger Scene sprawling in a comfortable chair, his leg thrown casually over its arm, it will not be easy for him to give the impression that he has something on his mind. Mr. Benthall has cut Hamlet's line about the murdered Polonius: "I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room"--and this is a sure sign that he intended to give us not Shakespeare's Hamlet, goaded by a magnificent saeve indignatio, but the charming exquisite foisted on us by certain critics...