Actor,
author and producer Ben Crystal kept a diary as he prepared to take on the
acting jewel in the Shakespearean crown - Hamlet. Here, he shares fragments
across his diary, with thoughts on playing the Prince, the current state of
Shakespeare, 400 years in, and where Shakespeare production is headed next…
*****
It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life
when he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself: [He puts his hand on his
heart] I will never play The Dane. When that moment comes, one’s ambition
ceases. Don't you agree?
Withnail and I (1987)
*****
Back
from watching a piece of new writing in the London fringe, but all I can think
about is I've been asked to play Hamlet.
Hamlet,
Hamlet, Hamlet.
I
remember watching Mel Gibson’s cut-to-shreds
Hamlet, with Dad. I must have been 14
or 15, studying Macbeth in school and
finding Shakespeare dull. I really hated studying King Lear at 17.
Then
after playing Ariel in The Tempest,
my first experience of acting Shakespeare, it was like light shone down, and
I have never had a problem understanding Shakespeare since.
Branagh’s
Hamlet came out while I was in
university, and I yearned, burned to
be in it. It was beautiful, and he’d used the
text in its entirety, every word, all four hours of it.
Then
watching my first fringe production - in a dark basement in King’s
X, produced by the lead, and it all seeming very formal, egotistical, and
cack-handed - an ego-project, the kind of thing that now makes my stomach
churn.
Then
Sam West’s Hamlet, the first professional
production I'd seen, full of clapping and moving security cameras on the
proscenium arch, the over-seeing of the court played strong.
And Jude Law’s
a couple of years ago, which looked stunning but I remember thinking “They’re
saying all these beautiful words, but some of the actors don't seem to know
what any of them mean...”
And
then the great ones I missed: Daniel Day Lewis so in character he walked off
stage never to return, having hallucinated the ghost of his own dead father. Or
Mark Rylance in pyjamas at the RSC, and then his second go at the Globe which I
did catch, so beautifully simple, playful, wonderful.
This
can’t be an ego
project. I can’t be a big fish in a small pool,
with every word dropping from my lips taken as gold because of my other work in
Shakespeare.
*****
Hamlet.
Hamlet,
Hamlet, Hamlet. The thing about Hamlet, about all of Shakespeare’s
parts, is he gives you the most beautiful, ornate frame, and a blank canvas.
You can paint whatever picture you want of the character. It is half
Shakespeare, half you. Shakespeare drops the golden bread-crumbs, leading you
towards the truth, but it’s still you
walking the walk.
And
the play has SO many questions. Is he mad? Does he love Ophelia?
What
is the truth, the reason behind saying these famous words, To be, or not to
be… what kind of person needs to speak
them aloud...?
I
wrote this a few years ago:
Hamlet is considered to be the most sought-after and
the most elusive role for actors, and the play remains the most produced of
Shakespeare’s works; countless productions, interpretations and re-interpretations
have been dreamt up, trying to nail down The Definitive Hamlet.
When
I wrote that, I remember thinking: but I
don’t particularly want to play it...
****
Over
Skype, my friend Will (a member of my ensemble who learnt all of Shakespeare’s
Sonnets off by heart) and
I talk about learning all those lines.
Shakespeare's
actors had prodigious memories, despite the booze: both because their culture
was filled with more storytelling than ours, and their brains had less input
than ours do - no synapse-creating Internet, movies, or adverts.
They
were the only ones intended to read Shakespeare’s
plays - 80% of the people in his time being illiterate - and even they would
rarely have read the entire play.
Apparently,
there was no scribe/scrivener/copyist on Henslowe's payroll. We talked tonight
about whether they would have copied out their own lines, a centuries old
theatrical tradition that was still practised in the Rep system, and a great
aide-memoir.
It
would mean means Shakespeare's actors were probably all literate. It's possible
they had their lines written out, or read out to them, but it's unlikely -
paying for scribes would mean wasted time and unnecessary cost.
So
they would have written out only their
parts - what is the point, if you play Laertes, to write out the middle of the
play? What, indeed, is the point in writing out the lines of the other
characters in a scene, if you only say one thing at the very end before
everyone leaves?
It’s
a waste of paper (expensive), ink (ibid), and time-consuming (not useful when
the play opens in a few days). Better to write out your part and your cue to speak,
so you knew when to speak.
And you'd have even less time if you were playing a
smaller part, as the full script would be passed to the lead actors first, and
they take soooo much time to copy their parts out. So your cue-script, your
part, is your entire knowledge of the play until you walk on stage and hear it
for the first time.
Some say the first time some of Shakespeare's actors
would have heard the play in its entirety was at the same time as the first
audience, and there’s a few companies (my own included) that use this cue-script practice.
It makes for very very live Shakespeare in comparison
to the standard, heavily-rehearsed modern productions, where one
of the skills you have to develop is not looking or sounding disinterested
having heard the lines dozens of times before.
****
Amsterdam,
to run a workshop for Will at a high-school in deepest south Holland. Workshops
go well, but I keep thinking about Hamlet...
Re-reading
it on the train. If I’m going to do this, the first thing
I need to do is work out the biggest mountain first: what is To be or not to
be about?
Some
people say that if an actor is revealing something about themselves and not the
character, then they’re not doing it right, but
everything I know about Shakespeare is to the contrary.
The
frame and the canvas. The frame is the verse, and you bring your self, as openly and vulnerably as
possible into the brush, when you paint the rest.
Hamlet
is more human, more intelligent, more passionate, MORE, than any other
character I've encountered.
*****
Coffee
with Hilton McRae. I understudied his Feste in a National Tour of Twelfth Night, the producer Thelma Holt having given me my first
professional Shakespeare gig. I was a slightly glorified spear-carrier, Orsino’s
man, with Fabian’s letter-reading speech at the end.
I met him at the read-through, and said
-- Hi, I’m understudying you.
And Hilt said
H - Oh god, you poor thing.
And
walked away.
But
the job was a start, and I enjoyed the craft of trying to bring a real, subtle
life to an unimportant character. I invented enough stage-business with files
and folders to try and help create the world of Orsino’s
court, without turning it into Twelfth
Night or The Plight of Orsino’s Man.
I
enjoyed the freedom of Feste, as he flew around the stage, slid on the floor up
to his Lady Olivia, and as the Clown, had free license to do pretty much
anything. The way he moved, I realise now, formed the way my Hamlet moved...
My
opening line in the play, after Orsino’s famous ‘If music be
the food of love, play on’ was the
nearly-as-immortal line ‘Will
you go hunt, my Lord?’, delivered by yours truly.
I
agonised over how to deliver that line:
1. Frustration: WILL you go hunt my Lord? (probably inappropriate to be frustrated)
2.
Pointed: Will YOU go hunt my Lord? (as
opposed to who?)
3.
Strong: Will you GO hunt my Lord? (by
himself? like telling a child to go play? really inappropriate)
4. I’ve
got an idea: Will you go HUNT my Lord?
(as opposed to? moping around wishing for Oliva - not bad)
5.
Possessive: Will you go hunt MY Lord?
showing allegiance: but, a bit much. And, the play is also not called Twelfth Night or Orsino’s Man’s Love for Orsino)
6. Will
you go hunt my LORD? (instead of calling him Orsi?)
Eventually,
I asked Hilton for advice in the car-park of the Plymouth Theatre Royal, a few
days before we opened.
We’d
broken for lunch, and I was glum. Even though I had almost nothing to do, the
director wouldn’t release me during the next day’s
tech run, for a big film audition in London. That’s
the problem with actors. We’ve barely
started the first job before we’re looking
ahead to the next. And we’re already
spending the money before we get there.
Hilton
stared down at the floor, then squinted up at me.
H - Well, it’s a question, isn’t It?
- Yeah.
H - So... ask the question. Will you
go hunt my Lord? Just ask the question.
Hilton
lit his licorice rollie, and walked away, as I stared at the space where he
was, slack-jawed.
Best
acting lesson I’ve ever learnt. The simplicity. That’s
the problem with Shakespeare. Because it’s
SHAKESPEARE and it’s LITERATURE, and it’s
written in IAMBIC PENTAMETER and it’s POETRY,
and can be tricky to understand, it’s easy to
lose yourself in a maze of over-analysis.
‘Just ask the
question’. A note I pin to the inside of my
head whenever I realise I’m working it
too hard.
Hilton
has a reputation for being difficult, but he’s
not. He just won’t put up with ANY bullshit,
WHATSOEVER. And he’s a great believer in how much
information is packed into the text and the metre. This means his acting is
terrifically truthful, and solidly based. He chases down the life of a
character like a Hound.
I
tell him about my concerns about playing the Dane, about what to do with the
big speeches.
Hilt
squints at me, in the warm morning sunlight of Primrose Hill. Then in his
lackadaisical Scottish drawl:
H - Thingabout playing Hamlet is, it’s not about the bits you normally get to do. It’s about the other bits, the small bits you never get to say...
The
great Sir John Gielgud floats to mind. His first gig was as a spear-carrier in
a 1921 production of Henry V. Eight years later he performed what
people have been saying since was the greatest Hamlet ever. He then played it
something like 4 times more, his final at 45.
His
style of acting - and speaking Shakespeare - went out of fashion in the 50s
with the arrival of Laurence Olivier, the Royal Court, and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. After
that, audiences wanted less musical-poetic, more kitchen-sink, real
Shakespeare, of which I am a disciple…
But
looking back to Branagh’s Hamlet, which at the time seemed so
ground-breaking, it now feels grand. Rather than people speaking poetry, the
question is why do the characters feel there is no other way to express what
they’re feeling or thinking than in poetry?
*****
At the Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival, giving a talk
with Don Paterson.
In
the Green Room, I meet the great Shakespeare actor Simon Russell-Beale. I tell him I’m
about to play Hamlet, and he goes quiet for a moment, before looking me solidly
in the eyes.
SRB - Enjoy it. Give it everything
you have. And I’ll tell you what they told me: It
will change your life.
-- How?
He
sits back, unblinking.
SRB - It will change you, he
repeats.
I
sit backstage listening to him and the Archbishop of Canterbury discuss all
things Shakespearean, when suddenly he mentions Hamlet and it’s awe-inspiring
hugeness and he name-checks me, as one who was about to undertake this magnificent part, and he wishes me
well, and then I'm staring into space and I walk in on myself: it's
actually going to happen.
*****
Before
I leave for rehearsals. Possibly driving everyone crazy talking about Hamlet.
Everywhere I go recently, people seem to have others
close to them who are dying, or have been close to death.
I
keep talking about it, because I have these flashes, these moments of panic
when I'm really tired or hungover. It's not natural to always be thinking of
your own mortality. In order to understand Hamlet, I need to get my head into
his head. Which makes me reflect on my own.
A
scientist at the Hay Festival last week said 'the people who will be watching
our own sun, which is 4 billion years old, burn out in 6 billion years time,
will be as different to us as we are from amoeba'.
Humans
generally tend to be uncomfortable with the idea of their own mortality, and
seek solace in religion, or 'something greater'. But Hamlet doesn't. He thinks
'the rest is silence'.
It's
a concept, like trying to conceive of the size of the universe and the things
going on around us every day, while worrying about an unsent email. Our minds
aren't built to cope with the macro all the time. And yet I'm facing it more
often than I ever used to.
*****
I start every
day of rehearsals with stick work I’ve adapted
from Complicité workshops. Stand on one side of the room. Balance a bamboo
stick (about 1.5 metres long) on the tip of your finger. Walk across the space.
And that's it. Just take a stick for a walk, without imposing any play or
character on it. But when it falls, and fall it must, catch it as if it's the
love of your life falling into your arms.
It's
a beautifully simple, endlessly fascinating
exercise. It allows practise in one's own physicality, and once a certain level
of simplicity has been achieved, walking the stick in character, or with
another actor who's also in character, can make for powerful physical exploration.
Watching
my company members reach into the emotional core of the play, and someone
different every day falls apart, surprised at their sudden tears. There should
be a warning on the back of this script.
It’s like
this play, more than any other, was once a novel, and all the moments,
interaction, speech has been boiled down to the bare essentials, that we’re
left with the essence of what they’re talking about.
We
spend our lives in bubble wrap, trying not to get hurt. It's good to feel pain, and ache, both in
body and heart. It reminds us we're feeling, sentient beings, that are so good at masking the experience
and extremities of life - we have to tear past that screen, in order to be
free, open and vulnerable; to begin work.
One
of the exercises I run pushes my actors to face the emotional heart of a text.
Once achieved, they can revisit their memory of the high stakes / emotional
depths, so in the moment of encountering a similarly high emotion in the text,
the chord has already been struck and the note is still ringing in their ears.
When it strikes again they'll remember the experience from today, and with
practice find it easier to reach.
The
process made them see that there's a blueprint there, written in, and that they
don't have to do anything other than just be honest, truthful, and direct.
****
...haven’t written a thing in a
few days...
...first day off since we opened. let the bruises (like
apples on my left hip and lower left knee - I still haven’t worked out where in the show i keep landing badly)
heal, my voice recover from this cold, and shrug off a little bit of fatigue,
thanks to the opening night party on Friday...
...an amazing show with a nearly full audience... ELECTRIC to have such a crowd to talk
to, to relate to, my friend, as Shakespeare's monologues were meant to be, not
introspective, but live and immediate questions or reflections to and with the
Other person in the room: the audience...
...must remember that more. i love the argument in the
relationship w the audience in Rogue, the terrible things said in the heat of
an argument with a loved one, like Ophelia and I playing ‘I loved you not/i was
the more deceived’ in the nunnery scene...
the move from humour to explosive anger to self-awareness to apology with
explanation in O what a rogue
and peasant slave am I... - giving the
audience a treat from the clever guy, as he explains what he’s going to do, and the vulnerability when he tells
them why he’s going to do it, that he’s afraid...
...the apology, and explanation for getting upset, the
trying to calm the angered lover with I have heard guilty creatures... onwards
meets with resistance. then the admittance of guilt, to lack of action, and the
explanation for that lack of action...
...the scared self-awareness in Now is the verie witching time, and the vile, menacing hatred in Now
might i do it...
...the Samaritan call in Too too solid flesh.
the knowledge of Now might I do it,
but have I been to arrogant with that? am I too knowing? should the action be
different? smugness is not attractive in a friend. but to me it makes most
sense. answering their question ‘why don’t you kill him now?’
...the final desperate words to them, You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes
or audience to this act Had I but time... O, I could tell you. But let it be.
wanting to tell them so much more, everything I never
said, that there were hints of in all the speeches...
...this week I think I've felt every emotion I have,
there’s nothing I haven’t shared, either on stage or off, the only part of me
people haven’t shared this week is the porn I look at
or checking for zits. oh actually, I think someone saw me today looking at a
blocked pore in the dressing room mirror, so I guess it’s just the porn...
i got nothing left.
****
Back in London after three months
away on the most extraordinary journey, and to see a production of Hamlet at the Young Vic. They've set it
in an insane asylym, and despite knowing the play off by heart now, I don't
understand a word. It makes no sense.
This is a bug-bear of mine. There's been
a tendency in recent years for his plays to be 'concept-driven', pushing square
pegs into a round holes as we try to keep these plays relevant to new
generations of theatre-goers - trying to modernise the piece rather than
performing it as it was written - and instead of feeling closer to the play,
people leave bored or indifferent.
We forget that first and foremost, Shakespeare was an
actor. Second, he wrote and acted always and only for the same group of
players. They worked together like ants in a hive for over twenty years. As
they played together, both actors and writer developed their working
relationship into a finely tuned, honed muscle.
If
Shakespeare's actors had their lines in advance, if they came to rehearsal with
the words already learnt, lines that had been written to suit their own personal skills, then
perhaps they could mount a new play in a few days. Maybe a day...?
What matters are the years and years
of experience; working in each other's pockets, that ensures both repetition
and difference. The knowledge and practice that accrue from working in a single
company ensure both continuity and innovation. Tremendously intense
collaboration between actors and their author.
Russian and Swedish theatre companies spend months,
sometimes years working in this way, forming such an ensemble, before beginning
more formal rehearsals towards producing a play. With Shakespeare at the heart
of our poetic, theatrical and linguistic heritage, so perhaps we should do the
same.
****
Coda
To a pub in Angel for a friend’s friend’s birthday.
Sam
West turns up, who I haven’t seen for
years. He asks what I’ve been up to.
- I'm just
back from playing Hamlet, I say.
His eyes widen,
and deepen - a reaction I’ve become
used to, from meeting other Hamlets. It’s a look,
like people who’ve run a marathon, but without the
time competitiveness, or people who have claimed the summit of Everest to see
what the view is like. A quiet brotherhood.
Sam
and I go out for a cigarette.
S - It
changes everything. Your life, your career. I was offered Angelo and I thought ‘Well, great.
You spend 3 hours on stage as Hamlet. Why would I spend all my time in the
dressing room in Measure for Measure?
-- Ha.
You can understand why Johnny G(ielgud) played it so often.
S - The
difference is John never filmed it, and didn’t
audio-record it until much later. If you wanted to see him, you had to go. I
performed Hamlet 120 times, and a musician friend of mine said to me
‘How can you
do that?’
I said, ‘well, what’s
your favourite piece of music?’
‘Bach’,
she said.
‘How
many times would you like to play it?’
‘All my life’ she
said.
‘Exactly.’
