If I could have the perfect Hamlet...Pt.1

So ever since I heard Simon Phillips had talked Ewen Leslie into doing Hamlet for him I've been making this list...
I've been making it because I have a very clear idea in my head what Hamlet should be like and I'm waiting for someone to get it just right. I like Zefferelli's Hamlet - Gibson is manly, tough - the solider and the courtier that Ophelia describes him as in the original text. Though I'm not sure if I buy him as the scholar too. Its hard to get right.
And by the gods I like the Royal Shakespeare Company using Dr Who...I mean David Tennant. Mr Tennant is not immediately obvious as a good choice for the role. But by the time he's gone just a little mad and had the chance to turn on his androgynous and somewhat unexpected sex appeal...I'm lapping it up...as it were.
Tennant seems to understand something about Hamlet that I would have thought was obvious. He's hot. That's why clever, sassy women like Ophelia (and his mother...) are so enamoured of him.

So my wish list; my open letter to Mr Phillips goes like this...

Dear Mr Phillips,

I am in love with Hamlet, please don't ruin him for me...
If you could just follow these simple instructions I will be forever in your debt.

1. Please, dear god, do not make Hamlet a fop. He's not a fop. And he's not a mummy's boy either. Was Oedipus a Mummy's boy? No he was not! He was a sphinx-conquering, father-killing sonofabitch. And don't you forget it. So don't you dare make Hamlet a limp-wristed motherfucker. Well. Ok. He can fuck his mother if you want, but not limpwristedly...

2. Do not, under any circimstances, give Mr Leslie a die-job or a haircut. All that floppy black hair is why we love him. And its why we will love him as Hamlet. Hamlet in sable. It makes sense. You know it does. Gibson looked odd blonde. Olivier looked VERY odd blonde and we all know Brannagh was just trying to look like Olivier. So just forget the blonde Prince of Denmark. Most Danes have dark hair anyways...

3. To be mad or not to be mad...that is the question. I want my Hamlet mad only in craft. And not in kind. I like a little extremity, a little excess. But I want someone whose noble mind has not been overthrown. Don't get me wrong. He needs to be brutal, desperate, and calculating. Send those schoolfriends to their ignomious deaths - Do it Phillips! But do it with a sure hand and cool head.

4. I loved Ophelia. And so should Hamlet. And I had better believe it when he says it. Because if I don't then I can't believe he'd put her through what he does and still love him.

Third time lucky

There's a point somewhere near the middle of Simon Stone's re-working of the Ibsen classic, The Wild Duck, when Gina (Anita Hegh) is alone on stage. The lights are blazing and the music is almost unbearably loud. Seconds earlier her husband of 16 years, Hjalmar Ekdal (Ewen Leslie) has stormed out. She is distraught, her pain almost unbearable to watch. Somewhere around there I know I whimpered and the woman sitting next to me turned to check I was ok. This is what really good theatre should do.

In the moments before, Gina and Hjalmar wrestle on stage; she pressing him into the wall, begging with her whole self, that he stay. Its intensley private; an awful, painful, uncomfortable moment of absolute physical distress. And I'm watching it all, through one-way glass, not even a metre from the now quite literal fourth wall.
There are more such moments to follow. I know my breathing matched his, as Leslie's Hjalmar shakes with rage and grief. Its so low-key, in fact so barely palpable I'm not sure if it was even visible from further away; but its horrifying to witness. This is what a really good actor can make you feel.

Its no secret that I'd pay to watch Ewen Leslie read the phonebook. And now none that I'd travel 2000 kms in less than 24 hours just to see him on stage for 90 minutes. But Stone's Wild Duck delivers much more than just putting Mr Leslie within touching distance of this particular fangirl.

This play is the answer to Ibsen's earlier work on marriage and lies - A Doll's House. Equally shocking in its time, Doll's House tells us why we have to be truthful, really truthful, in relationships and truthful also to ourselves. Much later Ibsen writes a play that argues the opposite.

This production is physically overwhelming. The intensity of the voyeurism, starring into the lives of this family as it all-too-quickly unwinds. The glass walls Stone has built around the stage don't so much create a barrier as break one down. The walls reflect the audience back at itself; we're as much a part of the play as the actors.

Sounds harrowing? It is. But its also hilariously funny. Stone has done for Ibsen in re-writing him completely; what no translator into English has previously achieved. Ibsen's theatre was realistic - naturalistic dialogue; real people; real people's lives. It deals with serious issues about love, relationships and how we negotiate our way through a series of social expectations which seem at odds with the reality of being human. But he's also really fucking funny. And so is this script.

Did middle-class Norwegians 130 years ago swear quite as prolifically and energetically as the characters Stone puts on stage? Possibly not...But then they also didn't have mobile phones, watch beached whales on their iMacs or "go down the pub" with their mates. And all these elements work in this play. Its Ibsen but not as you've ever seen him before. Funnier, sharper, more moving.

I wasn't crying by the end. But I was deeply disturbed. The mics the actors wear transmit every sound; every intake of breath; every gasp; the sound of Leslie sniffing and wiping his noise. It creates a soundscape vivid and visceral and in contrast to the empty set and pared down costuming. It means that the final offstage dialogue between Gina and Hjalmar comes to us as an overheard conversation. Its all the more affecting as a result.

I want to talk about how creepily likeable John Gaden is as the aging and lecherous Werle; the genuine affection transmitted between the two old friends when Werle and Ekdal(Anthony Phelan) meet by accident and share a joke. I want to talk about how Eloise Mignon blazes on the stage, stealing scene after scene as Hedvig; the girl at the centre of all the lies. Or Toby Schmitz using his whole large frame to bear over the other characters; his size and prescence an apt metaphor for the impact Gregers idealistic truth-telling will have.

But its Leslie that sets the set on fire for me. I have gradually been running out of adjectives; metaphors; cliches; with which to describe his performances. Last night I suddenly found the lights going up from total blackout and the man himself almost literally standing on my feet. If I gasped out loud, I apologise. You can read directors talking about his energy; the bottled chaos he channels on the stage - but that close, its almost a little too real. That glass wall around the stage suddenly makes a lot of sense.

Once in a generation...

I've just spent 7 days on my own. Just me and the sound of the car wheels on the road. I punched the air somewhere outside of Wodonga – not because I'd just left the place – though that's reason enough...but because I'd just clocked the speedo for the second time. Over 2000 kms of greenhouse gas producing solitude. Fan–fucking–tastic.

And the most significant exchange of words I had with anyone in all that time was with my current obsession – the extraordinary Mr Ewen Leslie. Now really, how can it get much better than that?

I had spent the 1000 or so kms before I got to Sydney thinking on exactly what I would ask Mr Leslie in the Q&A session after my third (yes that's right 1, 2, 3) viewing of The Trial. The Q&A session I was driving the aforementioned 1000 or so kms to be part of. There's a lot of space inside one's own head when there is nothing to do but drive; work out how to open water bottles and change CDs while driving; and consider which small coastal town deserves ones patronage for the night. The rest of my mind was able to focus on what to ask.

There's a fine line between sounding clever, knowledgeable and enthusiastic; and sounding like a dickhead. Walking that line got a lot of thought, particularly on the stretch into Lake's Entrance when I was already a little tired and paranoia may have been setting in.

Knowing that Mr Leslie is about to play Hamlet for the MTC was playing on my mind. I loved his Richard III – the fully self-actualised man – the self-aware villian who chooses villiany actively and accepts the consequences. “I am I” he calls out in the height of an existential crisis. Its the only answer any of us are left with when we face our inevitable defeat and mortality. Hamlet will be even better. I already want to know if they are going to leave in my favourite scene – the wonderful lines “O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.”

The publicity shots show him looking a little effeminate, clutching the sparrow whose special providence is part of the moving speech where he accepts his own demise. I hope we are not going to have a foppish Hamlet – let him be manic and masculine – more Mel Gibson than Kenneth Brannagh...

But all this worrying about Hamlet, got me no closer to the question.

I wanted to ask something about the actor's craft. A thought that struck me with particular intensity as at 8am the morning after the Grand Final I walked the beach at Eden in the sun and noted that it did indeed seem a place appropriate for tempting people with shiny objects like apples. I thought about asking about the lack of great speeches in The Trial for the Joseph K character. But then I remembered the wonderful speech, to the audience, made complicit in Joseph K's torture through him addressing them as the jury. Its a deeply uncomfortable moment – and when Mr Leslie ennunciates “Fuck you.” it has a new power. The F-word can still be shocking.

Of course none of his speeches quite measure up to the extraordinary parable of the doorkeeper from the penultimate scene. It is a magnificent piece of writing – Kafka at his most lyrical and horrific. Its impact on the audience and the trembling, near-naked Joseph K is difficult to describe. When the Chaplain finishes with the line “And now I am closing that door.” there is a collective gasp from the audience – we have been shown our own internal despair.

Its difficult to dwell too long on despair and death as one drives slowly up the southern coast of NSW. The sparkling water; the white sand; the pelicans diving, floating like small boats across every bay and inlet. But I still needed the question.

Of course some friends had suggested that the question I really wanted to ask was “So, what are you doing after the show Ewen?” but I like to think of myself as a little more subtle and cerebral than that. These may well be the same friends who were trying to shove me onto the stage in the Malthouse, whispering, rather too loudly for my comfort “Go on, he's up there in the bed, you could just snuggle in next to him.” With friends like that...

And it was another friend's question on my first viewing, which had made me think carefully about questions to avoid. She'd been fascinated by the way the blood from the final, truly harrowing scene had stained Joseph K's underwear in a patch that did indeed resemble menstrual bleeding. M is not squeamish and she asked if it was deliberate. There is something quite extraordinary about seeing a man who has just spent over an hour in front of an audience in nothing but a pair of white underpants blush and look at his feet. I noted, with an amusement inappropriate to the seriousness of said scene that when I saw it a second time Mr Leslie was at pains to bleed as far away from his undies as possible.

Those final moments of the play though are emotionally grinding. I had tears in my eyes all three times and during the first performance I saw, someone, not far from me, was sobbing uncontrolably. The bloodstain left on the floor of the otherwise empty stage is a moment of the most perfect pathos. So, as I settled in for my third viewing, crushed in the back row between a selection of Sydney's finer matrons, it was this that I already had in my mind. Its bloody amazing to watch...but what does it feel like to play?

I didn't ask the first question...but I did get my hand up, like an over-eager Yr 7, for the second one. And I explained, in my best booming teacher voice so that no one in the theatre could miss a word, that I found Joseph K a compelling literary figure; one who was fascinating to watch; but also harrowing. Then I asked what an actor could possibly get out of playing that part.

I have to say I was gratified with a very long and complex answer; which included lines about how the audience seems to spiral down as the play proceeds and doesn't give a lot back to the actor. Mr Leslie leaned forward in his seat – a good thing, because from the back row I could barely see him. He made some very funny jokes, which, to be honest, I was just a little too excited to remember. All in all, it was worth every km between Coburg and Sydney.

Fan-girl adoration aside, Ewen Leslie is something else to watch on stage. The manic energy which means he can't sit still during question time (in fact I've taught kids with ADHD who have more control over their movements) – becomes on stage a presence and physicality like nothing else I've ever seen. And there's a stillness – whole minutes when he doesn't move, does nothing but breathe. Simon Phillips, outgoing director of the MTC, has called him the actor who comes along once in a generation. Its hagiographic praise – but I think it might be accurate.

Sure, I'd pay money to sit and watch him read the phonebook; but what I will be paying money for next is flying to Sydney to see him in The Wild Duck in February...and now I have about five months to think of the question I'll be asking...