The last time Hamlet came to town, some commentators who should have known a lot better rushed to advance judgement to moan about the casting of David Tennant of Hamlet for the RSC - and ended up looking pretty stupid when that performance and production emerged as one of the defining ones of our age.
As Charles Spencer put it in his Daily Telegraph review of the London transfer, “This is now without doubt one of the finest productions of Hamlet I have ever seen, led by an actor of extraordinary courage and charisma who has made a persuasive claim to true greatness.”
Yet the Sunday Telegraph’s theatre critic Tim Walker had said before it opened of the RSC’s artistic director Michael Boyd, “This is the man who has got it into his head to cast the Doctor Who star David Tennant as Hamlet to ‘connect’ with modern audiences”.
As Michael Coveney replied in a blog entry at the time, “You’d expect a professional critic to know about David Tennant’s brilliant stage career before he was Dr Who, surely”. (When media commentator Matthew Norman quoted this in his Independent column, he wryly added, “Why Michael blithely ignores the perils of over-research is his business.”)
But Walker wasn’t the only one to indulge in such foolish advance speculation. The veteran director Jonathan Miller, who was himself directing a production of the play at Bristol a year ago, also entered into the fray to moan about what he saw as “an obsession with celebrity” and dismissively referred to Tennant as “”that man from Doctor Who.”
As Coveney again answered in a blog at the time, “If [Miller had] seen Tennant’s Berowne for the RSC, or his brilliant Jimmy Porter, he’d know what a fantastic Hamlet he’ll probably make.” And indeed did.
Miller also took the opportunity a year ago to speculate on the prospects of Jude Law’s Hamlet, too, and compared him to the young actor (Jamie Ballard) who was playing the role under his own direction then at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory: “I suspect he can’t act better than the young unknown who played him for me who was quite extraordinary.” Again, as Coveney replied, “Suspect, Sir Jonathan? If you’d seen Law on stage at the National and the Young Vic over the past ten years in Jean Cocteau, Greek tragedy and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, you’d know he was more than well qualified to play Hamlet. Shame on you! I’m sure there may well be producers who’d like to present the Bristol Hamlet if they could raise the money. But you could no more raise the money on Ballard’s name now than you could ten years ago, despite Miller’s assertion that you could. You might raise it on Miller’s name, but audiences frankly don’t want to ‘see’ a director; they want to see actors.”
And now that Law is about to begin performances in the play this Friday at Wyndham’s Theatre, the tired old commentary has begun again about what he’ll be like and what the critical response will be: in the Independent on Sunday last weekend, Toby Young declared, “Poor Jude Law. He must be quaking in his boots. He’s been talking about playing Hamlet in the West End for at least seven years and the moment has finally arrived. He opens as the Dane at Wyndham’s Theatre on Friday - and rarely have the critics’ knives been so far out of their scabbards.”
According to Toby, “To begin with, he’s a movie star and nothing is more likely to raise the hackles of a self-respecting drama critic than a celebrity taking a break in their busy schedule to do 12 weeks in the West End. Then there’s the fact that Hamlet is just about the most demanding role an actor can play… But most importantly, there’s Law’s tarnished reputation. Last time he trod the boards - as Dr Faustus at the Young Vic - he got a fairly easy ride, but that was back in 2002, when he was still considered an up-and-comer. Since then he’s become a poster boy for overexposure.”
And in a Guardian blog published last week, Imogen Russell Williams cast doubt over the whole Donmar West End enterprise - and concluded, “After three productions ranging in mediocrity from the mildly intriguing to the downright dreadful, I’m condemned to Jude Law’s Hamlet. After being lucky enough to encounter a host of brilliant Danes on the stage - Branagh’s, Dillane’s, Whishaw’s, and most recently Tennant’s - I can muster only the most lukewarm single-barred glow of anticipation, bordering on dread, for Mr Law. I don’t see him redeeming this costly bit of stamp-collecting.”
Jude, it seems, on this reckoning just can’t win. He’s being damned before he even steps foot on the Wyndham’s stage (and is carrying the burden of responsibility now for some spectators for shows that he had absolutely nothing to do with). But one thing going to the theatre regularly for a living teaches you is to never rush to judgment - though bitter experience may lead you to guess correctly that a new play at Hampstead, for example, is more than likely going to be a turkey (and so it proved once again last night there, with the opening of April de Angelis’s excruciating Amongst Friends), it’s always best to travel hopefully.
Thank goodness most of my colleagues do the same. Even if the bloggers and the commentators aren’t being fair, I’m sure the critics, at least, will be. In yesterday’s Telegraph, Charles Spencer interviewed Law and his director, Michael Grandage, and asked Law how daunted he was by following Tennant and that vast pantheon of previous famous Hamlets. Law sensibly replied, “You have to forget all that. Hamlet is a bit like a great song that’s been covered by a load of different singers. It’s like Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell all covering the same song. But they would each bring a different sound and colour to it.”
And hopefully he can also forget all the nonsense that is being written about his performance, too, before he’s even gone on stage to give it. And the critics will have to forget, too, all the speculation that is running rife about what we’ll think about it before we’ve even seen it, either.
And what of those people , few and far between to be sure, who have never seen a Hamlet but are going to see it for the first time? If Jude Law is the reason they are going more power to him and them. How lucky they are to go and see a star play the part. Like any great star part the one you see first tends to be the best, no matter who you see later on. For a new group of people their defining Hamlet will be Jude Law's. And the rest of us will sit in judgement on him by comparing him to the others we've seen in the past. I envy them.
i am flying across the atlantic from the united states just to see jude law in hamlet. do not underestimate his talent and perserverence. this is a man who has been nominated twice for the oscars, won a bafta and been nominated for a broadway tony...won a cesar the french academy award...also a golden globe among many other honors..we are not talking about a lightweight. how easy it is for some of these so called critics who sit at home maybe with a bad case of constipation and think "god i'm miserable...who can i pick on today".....well think twice before you 'jump the gun'......jude is not only going to knock your socks off but make you eat crow....
Michael Grandage also talks about the first-time theatregoers in the Charlie Spencer interview -- after the bit I've already quoted from Jude Law about having to forget all about the legacy of previous famous Hamlets, he says, "We also know that many in the audience will be seeing the play for the first time. Apart from anything else we have to make the story clear to those who haven’t seen it before. That’s exciting. Part of the play is that it is a really good thriller."
I see Dolores rebuts all those critical gun-jumpers by jumping in the opposite direction herself, citing all those screen awards as indicators of Law's quality on a stage.
Yes, it's a reminder of what reviewers are for. The very word gives a hint: RE-view, i.e first do the viewing. A character in Christopher Hampton's TV adaptation of The History Man astounds the trendy, ideologically sound protagonist when she explains her own approach to teaching literature: "The method I favour is to read books and then discuss them."
Here's an aphorism for you: Expectations are the enemy of criticism.
I do wonder what critics look for when reviewing Hamlet performances (or any other, for that matter). I'm not being facetious, I'm truly curious. What is their point of reference? I saw a BBC morning show piece where Penelope said that Hamlet can and has been interpreted in so many ways, that each individual can bring themselves into it. If that's the case, what makes a performance right or wrong, good or bad? Is a performance good if it stops you comparing to a previous performance? Isn't it a bit subjective anyway? These are just thoughts that niggle at me a bit.
Ian has a point but he also must have some expectations.
He can't walk in each time as a blank slate - he has his experience and thousands of evenings of theatregoing with him. The expectations of a Law/Gandage Hamlet has to have clicked something in his head (positive or negative) just as going to the Hampstead Theatre now has Mr Shenton (and maybe Mr Shuttleworth as well) quaking in his boots.
When normally seeing a totally new play one can say I'll sit back and go with the flow if it knocks my socks off, it's a hit etc. But with Shakespear the author doesn't have to proove himself he has already mamy, many, times over and more each year. This is a play to be done by someone at the height of their powers, old enough to have slugged it out with life, enough to have brought him to his knees and yet young enough to be willing to take on the adversites of life with ready fists, and excited courage. Mr Law fills the bill. His early trainng and theatrical experience give him the right to claim full readiness for the role and his experiences in life and good works for charity and the peace process round out what he has to offer, leaving what I am expecting to be a shining performance as proof of his having acheived his mark and the height of his profeesional splendour is about to be exposed for all the world to see.
Marin: Fair point. It may answer Sheryl's question too if I say that for me it's kind of like my response to non-linear, non-narrative performance: you don't necessarily go in with specifics in mind, but nor should you subscribe entirely to the school of "it means whatever you want it to mean". No, I'd like some idea of what YOU wanted it to mean when you decided that this was what you'd put in the show and other stuff you'd leave out. So it is with expectations: you go in with not a shopping list of particulars, but a capacious kind of zone within which stuff chimes with you and beyond which it doesn't. And then you have to try to expand that zone as you watch in any case.
For me, for instance, Jude Law's "early trainng and theatrical experience" [sic] - the latter part of which consists of two significant stage roles in 14 years, both for the same director who isn't the one helming this production - don't put me in a zone of expectation of instinctive, finely honed stagecraft, any more than "good works for charity and the peace process" would make me expect thespian wonders of Bill Gates or Gerry Adams :-) But my "zone" doesn't have surly, hostile border guards, so I'm up for seeing whatever I see.
Thanks, Ian. I think I get what you're saying. An actor can make the character their own, but you as an audience member need to be able to recognize the characterization from scene to scene, or moment to moment, even. They can't give a schizophrenic performance. Or something like that?
Pretty much. You have an idea of a kind of certain area of territory in which you think a performance/production/whatever may fall; an area beyond that where you hadn't really been expecting it to fall, but you find it interesting that it does; and an area beyond even that where you really need strong persuasion that it has any business falling :-)