"What a Piece of Work Is a Woman"
Ruth
Negga, an outstanding Irish-Ethiopian actress, is currently earning major
props for her performance of the title role in Hamlet, in South African director Yaël Farber’s widely acclaimed
production at St. Ann’s Warehouse, following its premiere at Dublin’s Gate
Theatre. See, for example, the encomiums heaped upon her in Ben
Brantley’s New York Times review.
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| Ruth Negga. All photos: Teddy Wolff. |
A little history: gender-bending productions of
Shakespeare are as old as the plays themselves, of course, since young men
played the women’s parts in the theatre of his day. But, since the Restoration
period, the convention of males playing males and females playing females
became standard. Then, in the late 18th century, the great British actress
Sarah Siddons began experimenting with male roles, most importantly that of
Hamlet, which she played only in the provinces. Subsequently, a number of
actresses brought their interpretations of Hamlet to audiences in London
(Elizabeth Powell, 1796), New York (Sarah Bartley, 1820), and elsewhere, not
only in English-language theatre. Last season, for example, we were reminded of
19th-century French actress Sarah Bernhardt’s Dane in Bernhardt/Hamlet.
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| Ruth Negga. |
Although still an only occasional gambit, it’s no
longer unusual for an actress—both stars and lesser lights—to tackle Hamlet, as
well as other iconic Shakespearean males, like Lear, playing them as men, not women,
although that’s what Kathryn Hunter did for her portrayal of Timon in recently
closed TFNA revival of Timon of Athens.
This is a big subject, fraught with debatable issues, so I’ll simply state
that, in most cases involving the great male roles, my preference is to see
them played by gender-appropriate and not gender-bending actors.
I say this not because I believe no actress can believably
embody the psychological, intellectual, and emotional qualities of a role like
Hamlet, but because theatre is a visual and aural medium in which we see and
hear the performance right in front of us. And, while some female actors may
have all the technical and physical, including athletic, requirements to
convincingly portray a heroic male role—which Hamlet definitely is—such a
package is rare.
Ruth Negga, for example, is 5’ 3” and probably weighs
close to 100 pounds. As costumed by the redoubtable Susan Hilferty in this
modern dress production—which offers few garments anyone attending modern dress
Shakespeare hasn’t seen before—she mostly wears a closefitting black jacket, a
white shirt, and skinny black pants. For much of the time, she wears just the
shirt and slacks, making her resemble a harried busboy.
Her diminutive presence among the hulking,
substantially larger male actors, creates nothing like the impression we get
from Ophelia’s words:
The courtier’s,
soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectancy and
rose of the fair state,
The glass of
fashion and the mould of form,
Th' observed of
all observers, quite, quite down!
Instead,
we see a slight, androgynous physique, whose female breasts are clearly
apparent, especially when Hamlet returns from England dressed in a formfitting
black sweater (and even tighter pants). We are thus forced to constantly remind
ourselves—including those moments when Hamlet and Ophelia have their smooch
fests—that we must willingly suspend our disbelief to accept the character on
Shakespeare’s terms.
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| Ruth Negga, Fiona Bell. |
Nor
does Negga’s voice, rich and potent as it is, alter our perception of her femininity.
Her speeches, filled with incisive readings—tragic, contemplative, and witty—remain
rooted in her womanly expressivity. I could go on but the point is that Negga—like
other actresses I’ve seen as Hamlet, including Dame Judith Anderson—gives a
perfectly fine performance that never makes you actually accept her as a man.
It’s much like watching a 300 pound diva singing Cho-Cho-San and forcing yourself
to believe she’s a delicate Japanese maiden.
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| Aiofe Duffin, Gavin Drea. |
The
arguments pro and con regarding Hamlet’s masculinity versus his femininity—some
even have theorized he’s actually a woman—go on and on, as in this Times piece by Leslie Bennetts, but
the notion that he’s more feminine than butch has always rung false with me. All the more so for having seen the thrilling, unforgettable performance of Donald Madden for the
Phoenix Theatre in 1961, still the best I’ve ever witnessed.
Negga’s
Hamlet, for all its thoughtfulness and sensitivity, works hard to convey a
sense of manly purpose, with outbursts of virulent anger balanced by
rapier-like satiric thrusts, rather than enervated philosophizing. Farber’s
production, while subject to dull spots, is generally energetic, performed on Hilferty’s
bleak set showing 16 doors along the upstage area and down the sides,
reminiscent of Meyerhold’s famous set for his 1926 The Government Inspector. John Torres’s ominous lighting, making
much use of fog effects, fills all the nooks and crannies with mood-enhancing
effects, made even broodier by Tom Lane’s sound and music creations.
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| Ruth Negga. |
The
script—despite occupying nearly three and a half-hours—is filled with emendations,
cuts, rearrangements, and the like. The alterations are both minor, like
changing “bodkin” to “blade,” and major, like eliminating all the Fortinbras
business and bringing the action to a close with “The rest is silence.” No one
jumps in Ophelia’s (Aoife Duffin) grave, by the way, and the gravediggers’
lines are divvied up among three, not two shovel-toting men (Will Irvine, Ger
Kelly, Gerard Walsh). And those “gravemakers,” as the program calls them, wearing
bowler hats reminiscent of the three blind men in Durrenmatt’s The Visit, serve throughout as a sort of silent chorus when death is
imminent, even assigned the task of rolling corpses about on gurneys.
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| Steve Hartland, Ruth Negga. |
Within
this gloomy world, Farber mingles straightforwardly traditional staging with her
own theatrical innovations. Considerable use is made of the auditorium for action
set along the aisles, including locations along the side walls. The Ghost
(Steve Hartland) seems to find such places congenial. If you’re seated in Row
H, which is separated by a metal bar from a cross-over aisle, you’ll be
fortunate enough (as was I) to be only inches from actors placed there on a
couple of occasions. One includes Horatio (Mark Huberman), Claudius (Owen Roe), Gertrude
(Fiona Bell), Polonius (Nick Dunning), and others taking their seats to watch
the Players enact the play-within-the-play designed “to catch the conscience of
the king.” Roe's thinning scalp being right beneath my nose, I could have counted
all its hairs.
Directorial
coups include a billowing, translucent plastic curtain that descends for ghostly
effects, and a bright red curtain that drops suddenly to represent the arras
hiding Polonius in Gertrude’s closet. The final duel (directed by Donal O’Farrell)
is, thankfully, with traditional fencing swords, both Laertes (Gavin Drea) and
Hamlet wearing protective masks. No furniture is present for this climactic
scene, however, so bodies are strewn around on the floor, supplemented by a
cloudy upstage tableau in which all the play’s dead characters appear to
emphasize just how many victims there are in Hamlet, almost as if in recognition of the coronavirus.
Solidly acted, directorially imaginative without being excessively gimmicky, and
attractively designed, this Hamlet is praiseworthy if unexceptional. But since its heart is in the hands of a
Hamlet who, regardless of her talent, never for a moment convinced me she was
anything but a gifted artist playing a role she understood but could never
fully inhabit, I was unable to give her my own heart. To paraphrase the Bard: what a piece of work is a woman. Being Hamlet, though, is something else entirely.
St.
Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St., Brooklyn
Through
March 8
