THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK - REVIEW OF BALLET BY LEPAGE AND CÔTÉ

Reviewed by James Karas

“Who’s there?”

Those are the opening words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet but you will not hear them or any part of the text of the play in Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté’s brilliant balletic version of the play, Lepage and Côté have codesigned the production and the former directs with the latter providing the choreography to the music composed by John Gzowski.

The story of Shakespeare’s play is danced for us by a corps of nine dancers who must convey through movement in 100 minutes what the bard needed several hours to achive.  It is a fascinating, intriguing and superb production that never lags and always fascinates.

The spare use of surtitles gives us a clue as to what part of the play is being represented. Guillaume Côté as Hamlet dominates the production and we see the Prince as a disturbed young man with his friend Horatio (Natasha Poon Woo), his father’s murderer Claudius (Robert Glumbek), in the furious scene with his mother Gertrude (Greta Hodgkinson) and of course Ophelia (Carleen Zouboutes).

The hot-headed Laertes is danced by Lukas Malkowski and Polonius is done by Bernard Meney. The clownish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are handled by Connor Mitton and Willem Sadler respectively.

We witness the angry scene in Gertrude’s bedroom where Polonius is mistaken for Claudius, killed and his body is dragged out by Hamlet. Ophelia’s drowning is shown with her fighting against a shimmering sheet, a very effective illustration of her death that we do not see in Shakespeare.

The final scene with the sword fight between Laertes and Hamlet is also shown and we see Claudius’ attempt to have Hamlet poisoned by Laertes’s sword. The stage is strewn with bodies in the end with Horatio as the only survivor.

I cannot comment on the quality of the dancing (I am a theatre critic with scant knowledge of the intricacies of ballet) except to acknowledge its beauty and effectiveness in conveying the story of the Danish prince in a different media with extraordinary beauty and emotional impact.

The largely dark costumes designed by Michael Gianfrancesco and Monika Onoszko convey the bleakness and tragedy of the prince and the entire situation where only one person survives. I would have preferred some more differentiation among the costumes to help identify the characters more readily but it is a small matter.

Gzowski’s music is moving, dramatic, approachable and splendid work that deserves a much bigger audience.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Demark is a big and complex undertaking. This was its first production and it played for only five performances. It is a moving, dramatic and splendid work that deserves a much bigger audience.

Who’s there? Well, it’s a brilliant version of a familiar work.

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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark designed by Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté, directed by Lepage and choreographed by Côté for Groundbreaking Dance Theatre Productions, Showone Productions et. al. played between April 3 and 7, 2024 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto.