Hamlet

NEW YORK

Stephen Aaron's production of Hamlet two years ago proved (as if it needed proving) that it is possible, even pleasurable, to sit through four hours of solid Shakespeare. Yet the Old Vic Hamlet, which lasts a piffling three hours and twenty minutes, becomes for good stretches distinctly wearisome. Even the slow pace of Michael Benthall's direction is insufficient to account for the depth of its descent into tedium.

Not 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 to mar the ceremonial calm. American productions of Shakespeare are likely to have abounding energy, but little technique or perfect taste. This Hamlet has exquisite technique, perfect taste, and no guts.

The designs of Audry Cruddas, for one thing, are nothing if not stylish. Her costumes (lots of trim uniforms) are more or less Edwardian, which is the fashionable period nowadays for doing sixteenth century drama. Her sets are attractively simple: the throne room is two chairs and a scarlet canopy against a 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, or no, coincidence, the best acting of the evening occurs around this part of the play.

It may be 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 for the tree-surgeons.

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.

The director, 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.

As Ophelia, Barbara Jefford goes mad quite prettily, in the most fetching rags you ever saw. One wonders why Laertes insists on ranting and shouting and making such a fuss, just as if something serious had happened to her. (It can be argued, however, that this incongruity exists to some extent in the text.)

Margaret Courtenay as Gertrude stirs up a small storm with Mr. Neville in the Closet Scene, but everybody else is calmly, gracefully in the vein. Oliver Neville (Claudius), Joseph O'Connor (Polonius), John Humphry (Laertes), and David Dodimead (Horatio) play the most important parts, and all are guaranteed free from any active ingredients.