Elsinore

 Tobacco Factory

Elsinore is a 90 minute riff on Hamlet by first year MA students from the Bristol School Of Acting (the same institution which did the impressive Tennessee Williams prison piece a couple of years back.) It is pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be. In a good way, mostly.

I am assuming that the play took shape in a workshop, with different members of the ensemble contributing different ideas. It felt a lot like a revue, jumping between Horrible Histories style skits and a pretty engaged modern treatment of the material. It's certainly bursting with ideas, even if it never quite coheres into an overall vision.

It's narrated by a contemporary and naturalistic Horatio. He's always felt he's a bit weird and is on the look out for a best friend. The idea of Hamlet retold from Horatio's point of view is a pretty obvious one, but I don't actually think of seen it done before. The rest of the cast are in burlesque Shakespearean costume, with much shifting in and out of character. Hamlet himself is a modern teenaged emo [is that the right expression, grandad?] with long black hair and conceivably a Nirvana teeshirt.

There are lots of clashes of register, some of which work better than others. Hamlet lies flat on his face during the opening court scene, with posh Mum Gertrude saying "Now then, poppet, stand up, come on, don't be silly, darling" but when she leaves he does the first soliloquy more or less straight. Later he stands centre stage and demands of the audience "What is the question?" until someone in the back row responds. Horatio broaches the subject of the ghost with a sheepish "Hamlet, I've got something to tell you." Comedic narrators introduce characters as they come on; and announce scenes as "The bit with the play", "The bit in the grave yard", "The bit where everyone dies". Back stories are invented for some of the characters; we're told some of the minor characters ultimate fates. Marcellus will catch pneumonia and die a few months after the battlement scene. "Everyone dies in the end" is a refrain. Ophelia is described as a "bedroom girlfriend" to Hamlet, who invites herself round to his house and spends time hanging out with him, and then convinces herself that he's massively in love with her. She can't decide if she wants to be a doctor, a novelist, or a film maker. Her dad wants her to study botany... Brother Laertes is initially a very annoying posh-boy who Polonius lectures at great length about the best way of packing for a long trip to Paris. Contemporary references -- to phones and music and college -- sit alongside some of Shakespeare's actual lines. It works pretty well. Better than some Modern Dress Hamlets I've seen; better actually than the Old Vic adaptation which everyone thought was so wonderful.

The play seems to falter in its broader comedy. The idea of Claudius and Gertrude in marriage guidance is a good one, but the audience screeches with laughter a little too much when the king admits that he has lost his sexual potency. Probably I was the only person present who wasn't a mates with at least one member of the cast. There were clearly people in the audience who thought that the words "jizz" and "strap-on" were hysterically funny in themselves. I couldn't quite see the point of the extended sequence of Laertes on the plane to Paris, terrified of flying.

You can't squeeze the whole of Hamlet into an hour and a half, even if you are doing a speeded up a parody. I was quite interested in which elements the young people thought were essential to the story and what they felt happy to omit. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are (amusingly) Hamlet's pals from drama club; they stage The Mousetrap themselves; there's no company of players and therefore no Hecuba and no rogue and peasant slave. Hamlet intrudes on one of his Mum and Dad's therapy sessions and kills Polonius behind the arras in the consulting room (and then threatens to kill the councillor if she talks.) Apparently no-one could think of a modern analogy for "My offence is rank" and "Now might I do it pat." 

I laughed out loud when the grave digger asked whether Hamlet was going to pick up the jester's skull and Hamlet politely declined. I enjoyed the invented subplot about Hamlet's dad bullying Claudius when they were kids, and getting flashbacks during the Murder of Gonzales. Laertes grows into an actual character once we get over the fear of flying gag: Ophelia's funeral was more moving than it can sometimes be in a serious production; while embracing the farcical side of the scene. (Hamlet repeatedly shouts "I love her so much I'd eat a whole crocodile!") The final duel is something of a tour de force. For a moment, it looks as if we've changed the ending. Horatio picks up the poisoned sword when Laertes drops it; and mediates between the two sides. Hamlet is reconciled to the King, finds a new lover, grows old and has kids of his own. But the cast have seen the Last Temptation of Christ (or possibly Gawain and the Green Knight); this was all in Horatio's head and the tragedy plays out according to the script. Everyone dies in the end. The last word goes to the grave digger, who describes, at some length, the death of the sun, the extinction of life on earth, and the heat death of the universe. I couldn't initially see the point of this, but on reflection, it's a perfect piece of adolescent angst. Horatio is still alive but it feels to him that the universe has ended.

I believe this performance was filmed and I hope it gets another outing. It wasn't perfect by any means but the cast went at it with gusto. It engaged with Hamlet as a live story as opposed to a dreary old heritage fossil. I imagine some of the cast will get to essay the original Dane at the Old Vic in years to come.

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