Hamlet

Tony Richardson's production of Hamlet is perhaps too subtle for those used to more ostentatious renderings of the play, but do not let that discourage you from enjoying the depth and clarity of this fine stage/film version, which reads very well on the television screen.

Celebrated Nicol Williamson plays an infinitely human and palpable Hamlet. There is no bombast nor bloat to the intelligent tone and pithy rhythm of his soliloquies. Williamson is one of a handful of actors who can phrase the complex *long bow* of Shakespeare's verse into the meaningful and memorable images that the author so ardently aimed. With Williamson (as with Branaugh 25+ years later), this Hamlet's increasingly cynical dispair fuels his rage -- not the simpering *moral confusion* of more formalized drama school portrayals.

Gordon Jackson, best known to American film buffs as THE GREAT ESCAPE's MacDonald (*Intelligence*), plays a wonderfully intimate and faithful Horatio -- indeed, here IS a true friend!

Marianne Faithful is in her element as Ophelia. And one can only wonder how Anthony Hopkins would play Claudius today? He seems to overdraw his character in this 1969 stage to film version - but then again, why wouldn't a King who breakfasted on baked fowl in bed have an overdrawn character? To save himself from tenderizing fair Rosencrantz and good Guildenstern for their fouled English mission?

Let others scoff at the humanity and subtlety of this performance. This lovely version [used to be] shown frequently on the BRAVO channel (when it was known *The Actor's Channel*) for good reason. The old VHS video is of terrible quality. The BRAVO channel version was the same as the current PAL-DVD release. One can only hope for an NTSC-DVD release but none looks in sight.

Nicol Williamson is a very fine actor, who does not seem to have realised his full potential. Nevertheless, all his performances deserve attention, as he is able to bring charisma and intelligence to anything he undertakes. All interpretations of Shakespeare's major works also deserve concentration and serious notice, since they are central to the Western canon of drama and literature, and Hamlet, especially, is the most remarkable of all his plays. It is not really sensible to enact the full script unaltered and uncut, and it seems doubtful whether it was ever produced on the Elizabethan stage in this manner, without trimming. What is essential, however, is that nothing but the words should drive the action, which is why Ethan Hawke's Hamlet and McKellen's Richard III are such relative disasters. At the same time, the director must have a unity of vision, and his take on the text must be coherent and consistent. Neither Richardson nor Williamson quite achieve this. The production suffers from ups and downs, and the various parts of the text that have been retained do not seem to integrate fully with each other. Richardson also appears to have been negatively influenced by Olivier's film, and sometimes seems to be going out of his way to avoid repetition of Olivier's reading. This is not a constructive approach, and one is left with a sense of dissatisfaction. There are other small gripes: why are the parts of the grave-digger and the player king both performed by Roger Livesey? This is extremely disconcerting. Marianne Faithfull was good, if not convincingly virginal.

Reading the lines above : No matter of how easy may be to scorn gifted genius, folks, you should first think and then act before trying to trench infamously this delightful dainty in a couple of poorly woven sentences, for this is one of the best Hamlets EVER seen and heared. Williamson's Hamlet crashes Branagh's right and left and overshadows the rest of the ensemble -but Hopkins'-. Yes, he looks like 50, though he was just 30, and so what?. So did also Orson Welles when he played the Claudius with Micheál MacLíammoír in the Hamlet role though this last one was over ten years his senior...Williamson could be for my sake 120, then his contribution to the character (edgy, defiant, sour, superb!) is probably the best one. And even if the backdrops were kind of unsofisticated and the whole production sparse -Richardson was lacking of the buck, hence the humble get-up- its darkness rather enhances the characters on stage, getting more eye-catching and preventing the spectator from any superfluous item that would disturb his attention. It's beautiful the way characters emerge from and slink and into the darkness. Williamson doesn't fall in the trap of giving the audience what they expect, nor needs to dye his hair or hide behind a million dollar scenery for a self complacent showing off, then what he's offering the respectable is a raw and intensely truculent Hamlet full of sarcasm and dangerously strong emotions, provided you can take them...

Yes, folks, this guy is unreachable, the KILIMANJARO of all Hamlets, if not the Everest. Not to be missed in anything -check the Merlin in Boorman's "Excalibur" or as the coke-snoring Sherlock Holmes in "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution"-. And where is he hiding now?. Is he still playing theater in London or elsewhere?.

Richardson was brilliant as well and did a good producer work, risky and controversial, it's just a pity that the play had to suffer from the many cuts in the screening version. This fact merms the whole thing a bit.

I wouldn't recommend this to the Kenneth Branagh's Estrogen Brigades, but for the rest of the respectable is just indispensable, if you can renounce to overloaded parades of firework in Shakespeare's adaptions.

Yes, mamma, give me more of this!

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