Sunday Whatever: Hamlet North-North-West by Geraint Jonathan

A lack of intricacy in the way of plot is no bar to fine theatre. In Mingus Mahoon’s  so-called ‘adaptation’ of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, however, it is. Put baldly, this is, in Mahoon’s own words, “the Hamlet of Polonius’s mind”, more specifically a Hamlet who bedevils Polonius’s dreams, a Hamlet wild-haired and swivel-eyed and clad in a straitjacket, a sayer of one word, and one word only, the word “words”, the one word he appears to mean when he says it, and he says it repeatedly. It could be said that there are a lot of words in this monodrama, and there are, lots and lots of them, but all variations on this one word “words”, the very word, or words, of course, repeated by Hamlet in his reply to Polonius’s one time query, “What do you read, my lord?”  A perfectly reasonable question, one might think, given that Hamlet had, at that moment, his nose in a book. What Mingus Mahoon’s interpretation does, and that so affectedly, is to pose several key questions. Is this a Hamlet made mad by reading deep into the night? Is this a Hamlet of the homeless mind? A Hamlet not overly concerned with affairs of state? a Hamlet without his Horatio to keep him in check? a Hamlet unknown to himself but long suspected? a  Hamlet not yet acquainted with the wisdom of gravediggers? a Hamlet so out of sorts he thinks himself dust, yet lingers, unable to unloose his restraints and fly free of the padded room he occupies? Clear as it is from the outset that this is Hamlet as phantasmagorially conceived in another man’s psyche, that of Polonius, it is equally clear that the Polonius who dreams this Hamlet is a Polonius most unfamiliar to his daytime companions, a Polonius not given to doling out advice, a Polonius bootless under the bedsheets, a Polonius well acquainted with the vicissitudes of being alive, a Polonius pencil-bearded and sweating by the light of a mint-green lamp. 

Even on the page, the power of Mahoon’s adaptation is undeniable. With his permission we are able to publish a segment of the text. Here it is:

‘Words words words words words words words words words words words words wordswordswordswordswordswordswordswordswordswordswords   wordswordswordswordswordswordsswords . . .’

Note too how, as Hamlet’s repetition accelerates, the word “swords” becomes discernible – in much the same way as the word ‘jeopardy’ has lurking within it a leopard.

I need hardly add that such a script looks deceptively simple on the page; however, it takes an actor of supremely limited range to embody the sheer weight of expectations torn asunder. That this straitjacketed Hamlet is not inclined to prolix rumination is a point driven home remorselessly. There are no shadows of doubt, the one word, repeated, allowing for little in the way of other words to creep in, but their absence, for all that, is duly conveyed. Implicit, too, is the notion that this Hamlet, this dream figure from the recesses of Polonius’s mind, is, despite the current paucity of his vocabulary, the same Hamlet who saw camels and weasels in the mid-day clouds, the same Hamlet who talked of kissing carrion and plum-tree gum, the very same Hamlet who waxed nonsensical on matters conjugal, yet brooded dispiritedly in the vicinity of Polonius’s daughter Ophelia, the very same Ophelia who would herself go on to wax nonsensical on matters amatory and make for herself a garland of flowers so wistfully wrought they tap the lachrymal glands, leaving only the stony-minded dry-eyed in their seats. But the weasels and the camels and the carrion have no place here, not in this grim setting, for this is a Hamlet drained of colour, of nuance, of humour, the very heart of his mystery plucked out, his range of expression reduced to the one word, the enigmatically-charged “words”. 

And what of the actor who shoulders the burden? It must be said that in his first Shakespearean role, former Lipster, Ropopopop, is surprisingly eloquent, his range of delivery stretching from the flat and affectless or nervilly trilled to the hurlingly bellowed and harrowingly screamed. Drawing on Shakespeare’s own advice for the role, Ropopopop said that his every uttered word, whether whispered, groaned, hissed, ululated or howled, is delivered “trippingly”.  “The script took a bit of learning,” he said, “but I soon got the hang of it. Hamlet is, like, absolutely fucked.”

Quite how fucked is just what this intriguing production reveals.

Geraint Johnson