By Bob Catterall
As urban tragedies continue, as part of a long historical process, to play out across our world, is it possible that the arts could help us to see and feel what is at stake, and even the need for action? The US TV series (available on DVD) The Wire does, but does the National Theatre’s production of Hamlet? Does its apparent discovery of a hitherto unknown version by Agatha Christie and JM Barrie present us with a hero who is a goof and a tragedy that, far from illuminating our times, is a dead duck?
The duck dies in The Wire but could it be that the National Theatre’s Hamlet is in effect a dead duck and that its Hamlet is a goof? The article that makes these claims is a satirical polemic but it is based on a long process of research into cities and the arts, and on a sense that Hamlet matters as we face a ‘dangerous and extraordinary moment’. The phrase is that of the theatre director, Sir Peter Hall, from his dialogue with the urbanist Sir Peter Hall, a dialogue mounted by CITY as part of that long process of research with a particular emphasis on ‘urban tragedies…as part of a long historical process’.
Is Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet, then, a goof? He is certainly more than a goof. It is a fine performance but it is prevented from being a great performance by the drab and shallow production within which it is imprisoned. Shakespeare’s Hamlet does of course at times play the fool, but he is in effect playing The Fool, a notion that is far more powerful and disturbing than that of a goof.
