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Review: Hamlet (Riverside Studios)

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Review by Raphael Kohn

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

There are 23 characters in Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy Hamlet. It’s therefore a bit of a surprise to see that there’s a new production of it, with… one performer. And while one-actor plays aren’t a rarity, it is rare that these are made from Shakespeare’s plays. After all, their detailed verses and complex plots hardly lend themselves to one-actor performances. And yet, playing in Riverside Studios’ Studio One is Eddie Izzard’s one-actor performance, playing every character in Hamlet herself, and absolutely killing it as she does so.


 

Izzard is remarkable in this marathon performance. Taking the four-hour play on all by herself in her brother Mark Izzard’s pacy and condensed (if a touch superficial) adaptation, she twists and contorts herself around every character, following the titular protagonist’s revenge against his incestuous, regicidal uncle thanks to inspiration from a ghostly apparition of his deceased father. The storytelling sometimes takes a backseat – after all, this is all about the performance – as she wriggles her body to engage in Shakespeare’s rhythmic dialogue with herself.

 

Imagine singing a duet, solo, in a shower. You sing the upper line, then the lower line, freely embodying both voices at once. This is that, if it were a professional-level, terrifically engaging, tour-de-force performance of Shakespeare. Delineating each character through subtle accent and physicality changes, she fixes her gaze exactly on where she was just a moment ago while playing the previous character. It’ s a tricky concept, admittedly not one Izzard always gets right in every moment as she occasionally loses her focus on her dialogue with herself, resulting in occasional lapses into rendition of lines, rather than world-class acting. But when she gets into it properly, it’s hard to remember any of that.



It's almost ghostly. It feels as if each character inhabits her body and soul for moments, taking control of Izzard as they recite their lines. The ghostliness permeates throughout director Selina Cadell’s simple production, with every element exuding unease and uncertainty. Tom Piper’s stark, stony set is a blank canvas, an empty, liminal space for the world of Hamlet to possess. Eliza Thompson’s folky soundtrack is cold and unwelcoming, with George Glossop’s sound work amplifying Izzard greatly, allowing her to explore the intimacy of the text with just a whisper.

 

Tyler Elich lights the whole thing with a gentle touch, saving his best tricks for when they really matter, otherwise bathing the set in brightness or through skylights in the ceiling. And when he does bring out his best tricks, he creates some truly terrifying effects, with Hamlet’s father represented solely through lighting tricks, either through moving lights in the space or, more interestingly, shadow work with Izzard’s portrayal of the ghost existing more on the walls of the set than the floor. At times, Izzard is so left alone on the stage, devoid of any help from the set or lighting that it felt as if she was crying out for a cue to elevate the drama, but Elich’s minimalist lighting is almost always excellent.


 

This all brings together a sense of timelessness. There’s no real time setting to this production, with Izzard’s costume giving no clues and Piper’s set giving even fewer. Coupled with a complete lack of props (if needed, Izzard mimes whatever the text calls for, including swords, daggers, spades and more), and the entire thing feels as if it could exist at any point in time, or multiple.

 

And yet, Izzard also gets to flex her comedic muscles. After all, she made her name as a stand-up comedian, and with the freedom to perform entirely solo on the stage, it becomes almost like stand-up Shakespeare at times. This is not by any stretch a problem – her grave-digger scene in the final act is a treat to witness, allowing her to show just why she is so popular. And while most of the production is a far cry from ‘Hitler never played Risk as a kid’’s levity, there’s fun to be had in the play-within-a-play scene, or from her frankly brilliant hand-puppet rendition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.


 

But there’s something else at play, which possibly makes this the most unique production of Hamlet I’ve ever seen. In having a trans woman inhabit each and every role, Izzard breaks the gender boundaries between characters so far that it becomes an experiment in the meaning of gender in Shakespeare’s plays. The gendering of each part falls to the wayside as their other facets become far more important aspects of their characterisations, almost de-gendering each character.

 

And so it feels as if there is new relevance when Hamlet’s ‘transformation’ is mentioned, and during the ‘what a piece of work is a man’ monologue. Sure, that moment may be written as a meditation on the human condition, but in Izzard’s performance, there seems to be an essence of questioning the nature of gendered identity in naming it a ‘man’, not a ‘human’. Could she be reflecting back on when she was previously publicly identifying as a man? Possibly, it’s up for interpretation, but it’s a side to the text I’d never considered before seeing Izzard’s performance.



 There are a few moments where it comes apart – the end of the second half especially becomes a bit muddled as the swordfight between Hamlet and Laertes is confusingly drawn out far longer than it should be. While for the vast majority of the performance Izzard’s role-swapping jerks and twists work, when trying to fight herself, it all risks becoming a strangely chaotic mess in these few, isolated, moments. Izzard manages to pull it all back together, though, as she powers through the finale to demonstrate the raw power of her acting chops.

 

It truly feels like we’re witnessing a moment in theatrical history at Riverside Studios. A gargantuan feat, Izzard’s follow-up to her solo Great Expectations from 2023 is a triumphant tour-de-force performance. It sometimes loses itself a little bit, but when it works, it works incredibly. I promise you’ll never have seen Shakespeare done like this before.

 

Eddie Izzard: Hamlet plays at Riverside Studios until 30th June 2024. Tickets from https://riversidestudios.co.uk/home/hamlet-landing/

 

Photos by Amanda Searle

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