European Stages https://europeanstages.org Some Quadricentennial Shakespeare in Germany Given the very large number of active theatres in Germany, their extensive repertoire, and their strong interest in the classic Western theatre in general and Shakespeare in particular, it is doubtless safe to say that nowhere on earth is offering more Shakespearian productions during this Quadricentennial year. Of course it is also the case that the majority of those productions offered during 2016 were not in fact created this year, the German theatre being devoted to the repertory system which rotates productions and normally keeps popular ones in the rotating system for years after their actual creation. Thus while I was not surprisingly offered a selection of major Shakespearian works on a visit to Berlin and Dresden in May of this year, only one of the three I saw was actually a 2016 creation. The oldest of the three was Hamlet, presented at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and the creation of that theatre's leading director, Roger Vontobel. It is one of three Shakespeare plays now in the repertoire of the main stage, the other two being The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. The only new Shakespeare here in 2016 will be Othello, which will open in November. Hamlet actually opened in November of 2012, but this being a repertory house with a fairly established ensemble, still has all of the original cast, with the exception of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As is almost inevitably the case with German interpretations of Shakespeare, the production departs far from the conventional productions seen in England and North America, although the basic text used is the Schlegel translation, the generally accepted German text for the past two centuries. When one enters the theatre, one is surprised to see a stage setting (by Claudia Rohner) which appears to be an architectural extension of the first two floors of the interior of the Dresden house. Center stage, above an ornate entry, is an elaborate box, done exactly in imitation of the elegant pastel baroque boxes in the actual theatre. Slightly less ornate boxes, copying the actual stage boxes, are on either side of this, with a neutral wall containing a window like a sound booth below each. The actual stage in front of this wall is narrow, but a large square thrust stage extends out from it as far as the second row of seating. During the first half of the evening, through the Mousetrap scene, this setting remains the same, and provides the space for what is essentially a rock concert version of the early scene, with Hamlet (Christian Friedel) with a hand-held mic and an occasional sound board providing a series of hard rock songs based on passages from this and other Shakespeare plays. The lighting (by Michel Gööck), especially during these special numbers, is abruptly shifting, in rock concert style, and Hamlet is accompanied by a five member rock ensemble Woods of Birnam, formed in 2011 and the creators of this work's original score. Their percussionist and his equipment are in the alcove beneath the central box and the other four singers, guitarists, and synthesizer players are stretched out along the narrow stage beneath the boxes. For most of the action, the King and Queen are seated in the center Royal Box watching Hamlet perform, while Polonius, Ophelia and Laertes watch from the box to our left and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from that to the right. 1 / 13 European Stages https://europeanstages.org William Shakespeare's Hamlet, directed by Roger Vontobel. Photo: courtesy of Staatsschauspiel Dresden. The production begins with the King (Torsten Ranft) introducing Hamlet's "performance," built upon material from the first court scene. Then Hamlet presents his first number "I'll call thee Hamlet," based on the lines following "Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us." Thereafter Hamlet normally remains down center, either delivering a major song or quietly continuing to sing under the spoken speeches of others as scenes not involving him (such as those of the Polonius family) being played above and behind him in appropriate boxes. During the scene where Polonius (Ahmad Mesgarha) brings his suspicion to the King and Queen (Hannelore Koch), the King pulls the curtains across the front of his box for privacy, while Hamlet plays a quiet piano melody on his soundbox. Using a device from Castorf's productions of the 1990s, however, Vontobel has projected on the drawn curtain live videos of the scene taking place within the box, so that all is seen. Normally the King and Queen exchange troubled glances during Hamlet's songs, but only when he launches into "Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark," including an actual incursion deep into the center of the audience, does Claudius feel compelled to descend to the stage and stop the performance. He asks the audience to stand while the orchestra plays the national anthem, and remains downstage with the Queen to confront Hamlet with passages from the opening court scene. There are no players in this production, the Mousetrap being apparently part of Hamlet's performance, begun shortly after his encounter with Ophelia (Annika Schilling). With Horatio (Sebastian Wendelin) at the back of the auditorium recording all with a video camera and others back in their boxes, Hamlet performs "The 2 / 13 European Stages https://europeanstages.org Mousetrap," his final song of the act, which is a musical statement of the Ghost's description of his murder (the Ghost never appears in this production). An intermission follows the uproar resulting from this act. When the audience returns from the intermission the forestage is gone, replaced by five carpeted steps up to the main stage. When the safety curtain rises, the theatrical boxes have moved upstage and become fitted out as domestic spaces, a sitting room center with a bedroom to the left and a bathroom to the right. Claudius, this being a German production, begins the action in the nude, defecating on the bathroom toilet before going into the sitting room to make his appeal to heaven. In fact these small and rather distant domestic spaces are not very useful and Hamlet's confrontation with his mother and the Ophelia mad scenes are played in the more commodious neutral downstage. After the death of Ophelia, the production takes on a quite different tonality. Shakespeare's Hamlet. Photo: courtesy of Staatsschauspiel Dresden. The wall with its boxes moves further upstage and slowly sinks out of sight, revealing a vast starry sky above a dark bare stage with Hamlet and Horatio near the proscenium. The Woods of Birnam group appears far upstage, in formal black garb and playing music suggesting that of a New Orleans jazz funeral. A much stranger figure then emerges far upstage, a bespangled torch singer with an elaborate 3 / 13 European Stages https://europeanstages.org feathered robe. Only her shovel identifies her as the gravedigger, but, handing her robe to Horatio and jumping into a grave, she is revealed as Ophelia, her naked legs still bearing the red crayon marks she put there during her mad scene. Neither Horatio nor Hamlet recognize her, but instead enter into her half-mad surrealistic universe, and she begins digging in the grave and shoveling out arcs not of dirt but of glittering spangles. Like the Ghost in Shakespeare's original first act, she disappears from one grave and pops up, still shoveling in another across the stage. She does though provide Hamlet with a skull, which he uses again in a performative way, like a ventriloquist's dummy. Her gravedigging finished, she goes upstage, where a funeral process is coming upward from some hidden depth. She falls into the arms of Laertes who brings her down to lay her out center stage. Polonius is laid beside her, but the procession then leaves as it came, and Hamlet plays the last scene alone, against a now starless sky. He props up the two corpses back to back to watch the scene as he takes each of the roles in turn and plays the final scene as a monodrama. At last he lies an isolated corpse, watched only by his two already dead observers. The two Shakespeare productions in the current repertoire of the Berlin Schaubühne are Hamlet and Richard III, both directed by the theatre's head, Thomas Ostermeier, and both starring the leading actor of this theatre, the much-awarded Lars Eidinger. The Hamlet production dates back to 2008, while the Richard III, which I saw for the first time this spring, was added in November of 2015. Although not in fact created in the Quadricentennial year, it has been the major Shakespeare production this year at the Schaubühne and toured to Craiova, Romania in April, Harbin and Tianjin in China in July, and to the Edinburgh Festival in August. The production is essentially a star turn for Eidinger, who is rarely absent from the stage and leads a small ensemble playing multiple roles. Indeed Richmond does not appear at all, and one of the most memorable sequences of the evening is the final battle, which, in a rather surprising parallel to Vontobel's Hamlet in Dresden, is performed as a solo combat all over the multi-level stage by Eidinger, suggesting that his struggle is as much against internal foes as external ones. 4 / 13 European Stages https://europeanstages.org Lars Eidinger as Richard III in William Shakespeare's Richard III, directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Photo: Carno Declair. The setting, by Ostermeier's usual designer Jan Pappelbaum, is far from the rather elaborate constructions of many previous Ostermeier works.