HAMLET OF OUR TIME
Author: PAMELA PAYNE
Date: 25/06/1994
Publication: The Sun Herald

HAMLET (Richard Roxburgh) sword raised, whispers above the kneeling,
praying Claudius (Jacek Koman) - "now might I do it pat ..."
Could any avenger want better opportunity? But Hamlet stays his hand. To
kill Claudius now is to risk sending him, soul purged, to heaven. And
Hamlet wants only to condemn this murderer of his father and marrier of
his mother to blackest damnation.

This is the turning point of the play. Indeed, had Hamlet killed Claudius
at this point there would be no more play. From this inaction all further
actions, and an agony of deaths, inexorably follow.

In any production, Hamlet must so act. Shakespeare has written it. But the
reasons for his behavior are a matter of interpretation. It's at this
moment, in any production, that we are sure of the Hamlet who stands
before us. Is his inaction a matter of equivocation? Hesitation?
Procrastination? Or is it his resolve to revenge his father's "foul and
most unnatural murder" with indisputable thoroughness? It's as this latter
Hamlet - passionate, intelligent, resolute - that Roxburgh dominates this
stage.

It's a rivetting, quicksilver performance - this painfully sane Hamlet, by
nature a peaceful and sunny man, appalled at what he must do but obsessed
with the doing of it. "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite/That ever
I was born to set it right |"

Neil Armfield's production is lucid, articulate, tense with energy and
charged emotion. He strips the play of any pomposity. He charts an
unerring course through it's often problematic scenes. He illuminates,
offers startling readings, of scenes and characters that in other
productions seem less vital, of lesser moment.

Has there ever been an Horatio to equal the one that Geoffrey Rush gives
us here? He's the moralist, the man of good sense, the philosopher - the
conscience of the play. Wherever Hamlet is, Horatio is not too far away, a
compassionate observer from the shadows.

Armfield has Horatio frame the action of the play. Thus, he transposes
final scene text to the opening: "So shall ye hear/ of carnal, bloody, and
unnatural acts ..." Purists may take umbrage. For me, the gut-thrust
impact and the chilling establishment of tone are justification. At the
end of the play it's Horatio, his voice rough with grief, who cradles the
body of his school friend Hamlet and bids Fortinbras restore order in the
land.

On this spare, grey-cold stage (designed by Dan Potra) there are a host of
fine performances that have both great integrity to Shakespeare's text and
startling originality. So many images compete in the memory:
Ophelia(Jacqueline McKenzie), for example, her dead father's coat over
defenceless limbs - grubby, dishevelled with flowers in her hand, singing
the song of her final madness. Her voice is like a frail reed that seems
barely to disturb the air.

Or punctillious, fussy Polonius (Max Cullen) farewelling his son Laertes
who is setting out for France - "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." And
Laertes (David Wenham), decent, quietly confident and wise, taking
troubled leave of his sister Ophelia. Or Claudius, like some elegant
European grandee, his doting queen (Gillian Jones) on his arm, making
cruel toast to the stepson whose death he has planned.

Armfield sets the play in a world - overswept by John Rodgers' evocative
music - that mingles past and present. This is mainly achieved through the
costume designs of Anna Borghesi and Tess Schofield. Top hats, and
bowlers, spats and scruffy day shoes, dinner jackets, waistcoats and
tails, sports coats, great coats, overalls and braces - their costumes
signify rank, station and occasion.

This is Hamlet of Shakespeare's time; and of our time. It's a remarkable,
memorable production; and a prodigious achievement.