This Play is Certainly the Thing
One of the very best DIY Theatre Company Productions takes audiences back to the rotten state of Denmark in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.
It is now nine years since the RGS DIY Drama Company began and there have been many theatrical highlights in that time. The Company’s gripping version of ‘Hamlet’, which opened in the Performing Arts Theatre on Tuesday evening, has to be one of the most accomplished productions put on by the Company yet. It is, arguably, the best – but that would be a hard debate to settle. Drama is now so strong at RGS, and there are so many talented and gifted performers at School, that two casts performed the play during the week. This a real testament to the School’s vision for Drama and the work of Mrs Witcomb, Director of Drama, who has nurtured and developed the DIY Company.
The superb performance of Charlie Raven as Hamlet takes some time to digest in order to fully appreciate what he has managed to achieve on stage. Here is a young performer in the relatively early stages of a theatrical career who, for four nights in a row, convincingly and compellingly performs, to tremendous effect, one of the greatest theatrical roles ever devised for the stage. He did all this with energy, insight, together with exceptionally mature dramatic understanding. Of course, Kenneth Branagh never had to do this after spending all day in lessons! It feels right to begin with Charlie but also to pass on best wishes to Callum Lockett, who was due to perform Hamlet on two of the four nights, but was unable to do so due to illness. We wish him a speedy recovery.
I must admit to experiencing a moment of doubt when I heard that the DIY Company was going to take on ‘Hamlet’. Really? With such young actors? The sheer size and scope of the play is so daunting; its language is so dense; its demands on the leads so imposing. These doubts were dispelled within moments and the whole production was marvellously well-conceived, skilfully acted and imaginatively produced. As I sat down to begin the second half, I overheard a conversation between two audience members (seasoned RGS theatre-goers so they appeared to be): “Every time you go, you think ‘How will they better that?’ And yet, each time they manage it!” I share this amazement.
The Company had conceived of the play as an intense immersive experience and the audience on arrival were surrounded by the deathly whispers of a Chorus of hissing spirits and a stage set that looked like Valhalla. It immediately felt like passing across a boundary and into a dark world where all was ‘rotten’ and ‘out of joint’.
There was so much to admire and far too much to adequately encompass in one review. To return again to Charlie Raven, as Hamlet: he had not only managed to learn and navigate his way through hundreds of lines of dense and knotty late-Elizabethan iambic pentameter, he also created a tormented and intense Hamlet and sustained this throughout the play. In fact, his performance grew with each scene. His Hamlet was, at times, a snarling, grunting figure enraged and angry (there were definitely traces of Brad Pitt’s mania in Twelve Monkeys blended with Leonardo di Caprio’s romantic melancholy in Romeo and Juliet); but there was also manic clowning and antic despair, as well as vicious cruelty, in a performance that never faltered and never flagged. It was extraordinary. Hamlet, as a figure, can overwhelm his own play at times but the two casts ensured that Shakespeare’s complex narrative patterning was never lost and the intricate interweaving of relationships emerged perfectly on stage. Both Olivia Neale and Catherine Broadbent as Gertrude were superb: their verse speaking was of the highest quality and both managed to convey the Queen’s tormented loyalty with great skill. The closet-scene encounter, in which Gertrude endures Hamlet’s violent upbraiding was, as it should be, almost unendurably distressing. The performances of Eva Barry and Anna Jobes as the helpless Ophelia were both very moving: the two actors captured the forlorn melancholy of the flower scene beautifully and the singing was wonderfully plaintive.
It seems unfair to select only one scene to mention in detail when so many could have been chosen. However, the scene in which Ophelia was pulled beneath the waters by the spirit chorus was harrowing and beautiful – in the way that all great tragic drama should be. It was a marvellous example of simple, effective physical theatre and the audience watched it in a state of breathless wonder and pity.
One of the remarkable features of the DIY Company is the involvement of Drama Scholars and others backstage in the production of the set, costumes and music. The Scandinavian backdrop worked brilliantly (has someone been watching ‘Vikings’ on Netflix I wondered); it looked great but also drew attention to the conflicts in the play between the pagan demand for vengeance placed upon Hamlet and the Christian ethics he struggles to reconcile this with. The ensemble cast exuded sinister menace as demonic interlopers and their presence in the scene where Hamlet almost brings himself to kill Claudius while at prayer was particularly memorable.
For several in the cast, this will be their last time on stage at RGS and it is worth saying thank you to them for so many enjoyable nights in the theatre. So, our great thanks to Olivia Neale, Luke Mellard, Ben Sears, Isla Tallon, Nicholas Kaleniuik, Lucy Smith, Eva Barry, Elizabath Adams and George Jasper. Some of these performers have been in six or seven DIY productions. We are privileged to have seen them grow and develop into such assured and talented performers.
I must admit to venerating this play to a degree that I know is unreasonable. Some of my most memorable and cherished theatrical and film memories include watching ‘Hamlet’. Anyone in the Performing Arts Centre this week can now add one more to this special store of memories thanks to The DIY Drama Company.
Mr Nicholas Phillips, Head of English
with help from Miss Juliana Atyeo, Assistant Head (Pastoral)
