Two revivals at two of our top theatres illustrate two different styles of directing. One is the English method of paying acute attention to the text, exemplified by Howard Davies’s production of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, and the other is the continental method of director’s theatre, instanced by Thomas Ostermeier’s version of Hamlet.
Set in 1922 Dublin during the civil war between the Free-Staters and the diehard republicans, O’Casey’s tragicomedy tells the story of the slow collapse of the poverty-stricken Boyle family as it struggles to survive in a tenement. Held together by Mrs Juno Boyle, the family is nominally led by her husband, who calls himself Captain Boyle simply because he once worked on a ship that got as far as Liverpool.
Now more concerned with drinking than with working, the Captain spends much of his time with the equally feckless Joxer, while his children – Johnny (wounded in the struggle for Irish independence) and Mary (trying to marry her way out of poverty) – seem determined but prove unable to leave their roots behind. Their best chance comes when a surprise legacy provides the opportunities that each family member has longed for. Being a tragedy, it is no surprise that their hopes are dashed.
When I say that Davies concentrates on the text, I don’t mean that he ignores the setting. In fact, at first the most striking thing about this production is Bob Crowley’s set design and James Farncombe’s lighting. The tenement room in which the drama takes place is a huge, palatial space which serves as a visual reminder that the Dublin slums of the 1920s had a history. When the Dublin parliament was dissolved in 1801, the rich left, house prices plummeted and their mansions were bought up by landlords who turned them into cheap dwellings.
So the high ceiling, pealing wallpaper and divided room is a perfect reminder of this urban and national history, telling its own story about the exploitation and repression of the poor. At the same time, the lighting of the play is evocative, natural and beautiful, indicating a contrast between the loveliness of nature and the ugliness of an impoverished society.
The play’s politics express O’Casey’s hatred for all forms of ideology. Every different shade of Irish republicanism gets confronted with reality, and reality always wins. Juno and the Paycock is a testament to humanism, and its emotional punch comes from the fact that truth always hurts, and hurt forces you to reassess your beliefs. Davies directs with the cool authority of a master. The stage picture is always finely balanced and the cast – led by Ciaran Hinds as the Captain and Sinead Cusack as Juno – are never less than convincing, even if they never quite take flight. Nevertheless, there is plenty of feeling in this classic.
By contrast, Ostermeier’s Hamlet is a piece of director’s theatre. He has taken Shakespeare’s text, cut it, rearranged some parts and re-formed it into a sleeker, bleaker and even more compelling tale of political intrigue and cool contemporary culture. Typically, the first scene that opens the show, is not set on the battlements (as in the bard’s original) but is the funeral of old Hamlet, the prince’s father, mimed to the sound of an eerie track by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Wow.
The set is alarmingly original: an acre of mud covers the stage, and the extravagant dirt of the production – slapped onto a table or chomped by the protagonist – suggests a dark underworld that is partly an infant’s playpen and partly an open grave. This is a story of death, decay and dissolution of the old political order in an orgy of violence and sex. The line “To be, or not to be” tolls like a bell well before the scene where Shakespeare put it.
Ostermeier’s Hamlet – played by the mesmerising Lars Eidinger – is a youth who is more at home in the trash aesthetics of a chat show, or reality TV, than at a royal court. His acting out of madness is delirious and deranged, and the production screams with contemporary references, bad language and craziness. With its microphones and video camera, this is a young people’s show – most of the rest of us have seen many of these tricks before. But there are some powerful moments: when I saw it, there was a gasp when Hamlet spat in Ophelia’s face.
Although you have to admire the sheer energy and punk disrespect of Ostermeier’s vision (there were several walkouts), the one thing that seems less than engaging is the acting. A lot of pratfalls, and deep immersion in the mud and soil, means that, apart from a handful of strong moments, you couldn’t really relate to any of the characters. In this play, what we long for is the psychiatrist’s couch; what we get instead is the disco floor.
But there is a real thrill in seeing a European director radically redesigning a classic – and this Berlin Hamlet does pack a punch. It reminds you of just how timid our theatre culture is, and will remain so until British directors leave behind their paralysing respect for the Shakespearean text and get on with producing shows that have the power to excite, while at the same time engaging our emotions.
