Guillaume Côté in ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark’, Photo by Stéphane Bourgeois
With a history of colossal and dazzling theatrical illusions, Robert Lepage’s name holds the promise for grand, innovative spectacle. His production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle for The Metropolitan Opera, for instance, with its huge rotating panels and integrated projections, was mythic and awe-inducing. When considering his reputation, this wordless retelling of Shakespeare’s momentous classic, a collaboration with Guillaume Côté, is pointedly restrained. The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, presented by Côté Danse, Ex Machina, and Show One Productions, has a number of distinctly impressive flourishes yet is, overall, very traditional.
Choreographed by Côté as a contemporary ballet, he also plays the titular role. The character dynamics and psychological heft of the text is given tangible weight in movement and emotionally expressive physicality. From the opening moments, when the court of Elsinore is buoyant with revelry, he sits apart, brooding over his father’s suspicious death, his chair aimed away from the festivities. He confides only in his friend Horatio, played here by Natasha Poon Woo, who brings a mischievous energy to her role as confidante.
Lepage, who has a long history with this play, has described his discovery of the story’s skeleton and visceral tangibility once the text had been removed for this retelling. Props and costumes have a conventional, Elizabethan aesthetic held elegantly together within a dark and ominous atmosphere. This feels classy and classic, but the intensity of the mood and exhilarating moments of theatrical showmanship prevent this from feeling too stuffy or pedestrian.
A shroud is expanded and pulled outward by mystical forces to become a vast canvas for sinister shadow play. A red velvet curtain traverses the stage, pulling set pieces and characters on and off as if by slight of hand. Ofelia’s (Carleen Zouboules) drowning is the most stirring: caught in the massive, undulating expanse of blue fabric, we are given the illusion of an overhead view as she is suspended and tossed about by hidden hands. A billowing red curtain also serves as textured backdrop to characters fighting to advance through treacherous winds.
In this version, Hamlet and Horatio themselves put on the play that points an accusing finger at his uncle, Claudius (Robert Glumbek). Donning masks on the backs of their heads, their off-kilter bodily contortions to mimic natural, front-facing movement add a giddy yet deeply unnerving layer of wrongness to the their mimed re-enactment of murder. Glumbek’s violent reeling back towards the front of the stage and subsequent theatrical isolation is impressively jarring.
Of the ensemble (including Greta Hodgkinson’s Gertrude, Lukas Malkowski’s Laertes and Bernard Meney’s Polonius), Connor Mitton and Willem Sadler as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were a comedic highlight. They bring a playful dude bro chemistry to their interactions with Hamlet, unsuccessfully masking their duplicity beneath rowdy antics. Their frivolous handling of the literal masks used for Hamlet’s climactic provocation seem to seal their fate.
I’m not entirely sold on the surtitles. Some iconic lines of text and character entrances are projected above, a nod towards the beloved source. The clever anagrammatic phrases made out of the letters of William Shakespeare’s name are cute, but these reminders of absent text feel unnecessary and even somewhat undermine the conceptual impact of the performance.
Though it was richly textured and emotive with a rousingly cinematic score by composer John Gzowski, I was slightly underwhelmed by the production. I admire it, certainly enjoyed it, but found it too strategic and contained to allow my imagination to soar as fully as it has with some of either Côté or Lepage’s previous works.
The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark
running April 3 to April 7, 2024
Elgin Theatre (189 Yonge St.)
running time: 2 hours (no intermission)
Ensemble of ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark’, Photo by Stéphane Bourgeois