[In the following review, Tassi comments on Peter Brook's stage production of Hamlet. Tassi observes the production's simplicity and starkness, praises Adrian Lester's performance of Hamlet, and notes that the production at times suffered from problems due to Brook's script alterations.]

On Sunday, April 15 at the Mercer Arena in Seattle, Washington, the evening performance was The Tragedy of Hamlet, British director Peter Brook's controversial adaptation of Shakespeare's play. In the program notes, Brook asserted, “It is only when we forget Shakespeare that we can begin to find him.” In this enigmatic statement we find Brook's justification for his alteration of the play's form and his search for vital, even primal, forces at work in character and language that have not been emphasized by other directors. This production was clearly not a resurrection of the Elizabethan theater, for Brook's concern was not to aim for an authentic reproduction of the early modern play (as much as that is possible), nor was it to stay faithful to the First Folio's or second quarto's forms. In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Brook's third professional attempt at the play, he stripped away everything he found inessential to the theatrical vitality of Hamlet, so that our awareness was keenly focused on how Shakespeare's play explores the mythic and philosophical problems of being. Brook's directorial vision marked many aspects of this production: a multi-ethnic cast that spoke with various English accents, the faraway sounds of Eastern music, stylized movement, a pared-down playing space, and simple tunics for costumes. Such choices in casting and staging reinforced the universal dimension of the play; in essence, Brook's production tapped deeply into the universal, mythic spirit of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

It is undeniable that Brook has much to offer the “Hamlet dialogue,” both in theatrical and literary critical terms. Brook's particular genius lies in experimentation, risk-taking, and essentializing the theater experience. His adaptation reflects a rigorous cutting and re-arranging of the text, which not only compressed and somewhat reconfigured the form, but also restored a sense of discovery to the all-too-familiar script. In dispensing with almost half of the text and some of its characters (e.g., Fortinbras, Reynaldo), he provoked his audience to “find” the play again in a new, ascetic form. The overall effect was that of novelty, intensity, and speed: the action moved along without pause, and Hamlet had no time to hesitate; indeed it was made painfully clear in this production that there is never a just and right moment for Hamlet's revenge, until the very moment he takes it.

Brook sharpened our awareness of words (and what the actors were doing with them) by removing all distractions. The set, designed by Chloé Obolensky, was spare, though vivid in color scheme; a persimmon orange carpet marked the playing space, pillows and rugs were thrown in a few areas, and a Japanese musician, Toshi Tsuchitori, present throughout the drama, accompanied much of the action and speech with haunting strains of music. Visual images were created by only a few props, most notably Yorick's skull from the gravedigger scene. Brook dispensed with every material thing that was not crucial to the making of Hamlet's world. The impression one had was that Brook stripped Shakespeare's play down to its metaphysical core.

The stark beauty of the drama—its sheer simplicity, we might say—was to be found in its language, most particularly in the dazzling verbal athleticism of Adrian Lester, a compellingly modern, brilliant Hamlet. Lester has a razor-sharp command of Shakespearean diction and syntax, and even more, a feel for the idiosyncratic musicality of Hamlet's speech. Lester's asexual presence and virtuosity with language gave Hamlet a startlingly fresh, intellectual presence. With the cutting of the script, Lester remained on stage for most of the evening, electrifying the audience with his humor, physical agility, and anguished speeches. He made clear his repulsion for playing, for lies, pretense and the like, taking on his “antic disposition” with an air of mischievous calculation and exasperation. He was very aware of the audience's presence in the arena—that we were his intimates, listening, admiring, and watching his every move. Indeed he seemed to cultivate an intimacy with us, stealing sly glances at us or appealing directly to us to enjoy his taunting of Polonius. When Lester delivered the soliloquy, “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I,” he did a bit of outrageous ham acting with some of the lines, stopped in disgust, and then returned to seriousness (non-acting) as he expressed his intent to use the theater experimentally to catch Claudius's conscience. This was typical of Lester's performance: his Hamlet is a purist with a dazzling, though sometimes dangerous, wit, who feels trapped within a world of pretense and foolishness.

Lester's “To be or not to be” was delivered with great simplicity. The speech had been moved to a point after Polonius's death, which, in performance, had the effect of making Hamlet appear to be in a state of emotional and moral exhaustion. Lester's gestures as he spoke the soliloquy were those of taking his pulse, and then cutting his wrist, a most simple and moving way to express being and not being. It was an affecting stage picture, quiet, despairing, and honest. This worked in high relief with the gravedigger scene in which Lester comically, even outrageously, manipulated Yorick's skull, which he placed on a stick and worked like a jester's head. Both scenes offered moments of renewed vision in which Lester's embodiment of Hamlet was completely fresh and convincing.

Another moment of heightened and renewed vision occurred when the Player King delivered his Hecuba speech. He chanted the speech in the strange language, Orghast, invented by Ted Hughes, and ancient Greek; those on the stage looked on, wonder-struck by the performance. We, too, in the audience were spellbound, charmed as much by the chant, as by the effect it was having on the characters: the defamiliarizing of the text worked to restore a sense of awe at this moment. Here was a tribute to the theater's power.

Some notable problems, due primarily to the script alterations, did not escape attention. Laertes made a surprise appearance late in the play (theatergoers could only have assumed that he too had been cut after the first act passed with no sign of him). At this late point in the drama, since we had not witnessed him in his roles as son and brother, we had no emotional connection to him, and his grief over the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia did not carry the emotional charge that it should. The absence of Fortinbras and the larger political context of the play was a loss undeniably felt by those who know the tragedy intimately. While this cut allowed Brook to stay focused on Hamlet's personal dilemma, it robbed Denmark of political realities and consequences. Gertrude, played by Natasha Parry, appeared as a gracious lady, but seemed to be too naively oblivious to the import of everything that was taking place around her. Finally, some of the doublings were confusing—the actors who played Rosencrantz and Guildenstern took other roles, but did not differentiate between them sufficiently either through costume or acting style. The doublings of Claudius and Old Hamlet, played expertly by Jeffrey Kissoon, and Polonius and the Gravedigger, played by the brilliant and versatile Bruce Myers, however, both struck one as uncannily right. In the former, we had a show in contrasts; in the former, an underlying connection was implied between two kinds of fools.

Criticism aside, Brook's Hamlet is a production not to be forgotten, for the director's approach, with the many highly skilled, energetic actors, made the theater come as close to life as it can, offering a renewed vision of one of Shakespeare's most frequently produced dramas. The play ended with the same haunting question that plunged us into the play-world, reminding us once again of essential matters. It is our question, it is Hamlet's question, it is the actors' question to us: “Who's there?” Horatio, played as a wide-eyed, devoted friend to Hamlet by Scott Handy, asked the question both times. Not only did this question inspire a strange sense of metaphysical unease, but in the play's final moment, we also witnessed the rising of the dead: all of the actors slowly stood up to join Horatio as he peered hopefully into the darkened theater, as if looking into some vast unknowable realm. The playing space visibly lightened. Here was a moment of pure metaphysical being in the theater. This was indeed a different vision of Shakespeare's play that had the power to disturb, to defy expectations, and to remind us that Hamlet still has tremendous vitality and philosophical importance in today's theater.