I had a great weekend.
I was staying at Redhead’s. I was particularly pleased that we’d arranged to spend the weekend together since our respective plans for the next few months made it likely that we wouldn’t see much of each other at all. That might have changed since I’ve re-thought my plans a bit but it was still good to catch up.
We spent a lot of time chatting (as always) and eating (Redhead is a seriously good cook) and had a few beers. Got some shopping in too. And met up with an old friend which was a lovely addition.
We’ve also added ‘wigwam’ to the long long list of words and phrases that make us both crack up for reasons unfathomable to anyone else.
The main event of the weekend though, was seeing Hamlet and visiting Stratford-upon-Avon. We stayed there Saturday night and did the Shakespeare sites Saturday afternoon and Sunday around seeing Hamlet on Saturday night.
The production’s proved so popular that tickets were considered to be like gold dust. I was just happy to have seats at all but we actually had incredible tickets - maybe ten rows back, only four seats right of the exact middle, raised so we were at eye level with the actors and with no-one in front of us - and paid only £18 each.
They were sold to me as restricted view but my view was perfect. And although Redhead had a pillar in her sight-line, it was quite narrow and, she assured me, easy to avoid so long as the people behind don’t complain at her moving her head from time-to-time (which they didn’t and were unlikely to since they were higher up anyway).
I thought that maybe the RSC were just really inexpensive (we were waaaay out of London after all!) but Redhead took a sneaky peek at the tickets of some people near us and they’d paid £35 each so I guess we just got lucky.
The actual play was simply incredible.
Of all the Shakespearean productions I’ve seen, this was the first one when I haven’t known the text pretty well. I’ve only ever read Hamlet once and that was a quick read not a studied one. So I thought it said a lot for the quality of the acting that I didn’t once have to struggle to interpret the language.
I remember finding a lot of the characters quite odd when I read it, their actions confusing or simply unrealistic. But each role was interpreted so well that every motive and meaning seemed clear - even Hamlet’s, who I remember as a rather bewildering character. I thought David Tennant was excellent. He held the audience brilliantly, taking us with him at every moment as he rapidly switches between comedy, grief, despair and fury.
Patrick Stewart was as good as I expected (which was very!). He drew my sympathy as well as my repulsion with his version of Claudius. And he was impressively imposing as Old Hamlet.
The rest of the cast was spot on too, making ridiculous characters likeable and creepy characters understandable. And unlike every other Shakespearian play I’ve seen (and many other plays too), there wasn’t even one actor who believed they needed to deliver every line in a shout.
So that was Hamlet. Just awesome. I just hope the rest of my Shakespeare circuit (there are so many I haven’t seen, it’s appalling!) are even half as good.
