Hamlet at the Met review – Shakespeare on steroids
Brett Dean’s Hamlet set the New York Met stage alight. It started with a growling, sinister, single, rising bass note, delivered in darkness. Slowly, the Danish court became illuminated.
Finished with a narrowing spotlight on the dying Hamlet, as the “to be” question was answered, emphatically in the negative. The court had faded to…nothing.
There was never a moment during the two Act performance that was not totally absorbing. This was Shakespeare on musical steroids. Dean and his librettist Matthew Jocelyn were as faithful to the original text, necessarily truncated, as possible. For Jocelyn, Shakespeare was good enough.
But, what’s this? “To be or not to be, that is the point?” “Point?” “Question”, surely, if my 3rd Form English class memory serves me correctly. Not if you dig nerd-like into the First Quarto version of the play. This was not, as some of the audience I chatted with assumed, a Jocelyn confection. It was a smart use of an unfamiliar version. I think it was used to secure a one-syllable-sharp landing point for the end of the musical phrase.
And this attention to textual detail was extended into production values which rendered the surtitles almost irrelevant. Every word was as clearly articulated in the mouths of the characters in Manhattan 2022 as they would have been in London’s Globe Theatre in 1601.
Shakespeare crafted the leading role for tragedian, Richard Burbage. Dean and Jocelyn were fortunate that British tenor, Allen Clayton, was to hand when Hamlet premiered in Glyndebourne in 2017. For he, in turn, has made the role his own.
The Met sensibly re-cast him in New York, as they did fabulous British mezzo, Sarah Connolly, a regal Gertrude, American baritone Rod Gilfry, Claudius, British tenor David Butt Philip, Laertes and South African baritone Jacques Imbrailo, Horatio.
I can’t recall when a five-year-old production was brought over the pond to the Met stage almost intact. A tribute to the original Glyndebourne casting and the Met’s determination to keep as many of the wonderful ensemble together as possible.
Some changes were inevitable. American soprano, Brenda Era, sang Ophelia. I found her more icily determined, especially in the mad scene, than had been Canadian soprano, Barbara Hannigan in Glyndebourne. Hannigan was anxious Cotswold kitchen. Rae was visceral. Shriekingly mad.
American tenor, William Burden, was a scheming Polonius. In 2017 British tenor Kim Begley had been more oleaginous. The Burden interpretation felt truer to Polonius’ position as chief counsellor, not butler.
Rosencrantz was American counter tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen. British tenor, Christopher Lowry reprised his Glyndebourne performance as Guildenstern. Both Met debuts.
Time out! I have a dog in this fight. I met Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen in San Francisco when I was there to see Jake Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life in 2018. Then, Cohen was an Adler scholar, supported by my good friend, former President of San Francisco Opera Guild, Karin Kubin.
Kubin is a force of nature. Cohen debuting at the Met was a super thrill. She hosted a delightful party at The Pierre for her protégé, his wife and friends the following day. I learnt that to make him a more comical, nodding, Rosencrantz Cohen had submitted to having his hair parted on the wrong side, the better to have it peak ridiculously. Detail, detail. It matters!
I think Cohen leaves Manhattan at the end of this Hamlet run with every prospect of returning to the Met stage. The warmth of his curtain call was evidence enough that the audience appreciated not only his crystal sharp, countertenor delivery but his comic acting ability. Here, represented by nodding dog subservience and cute sideway glances.
He was hilarious. Jocelyn has not written critical parts for the two famous stooges, but they are important walk-on foils. Lowrey and Cohen interacted perfectly. I do not dwell on Lowrey simply because he is not my dog. They both milked it for all it was worth. Brilliant!
Clayton’s Hamlet is a dishevelled, black-coated presence throughout. At the end, the perspiration was standing on his white, pancake made up forehead. His voice covers the spectrum from sarcasm-sharp to introspectively plangent.
He benefited from the larger venue as he strode hither and thither, leapt upon and traversed a fully set dining table — amazingly not a crunching breakage to be heard — his desperation always just under control.
After all, he is the great manipulator, the inventor of the play to catch the conscience of the King. Clayton’s Hamlet had evolved since Glyndebourne. Deeper. He was fantastic.
Dean’s score is a masterpiece. It complements the dialogue perfectly, unsettling the ear. It is a well-controlled racket, using a surprising range of instruments and creating an immersive sound world – complemented by using toe-tingling sub-woofers. Not usually my thing for opera, but it worked.
We were in surround-sound heaven. A small choir was located in the pit. Players in high boxes stage right and left delivered fanfares. Brett wanted “to really live the play’s emotional terrain”, and he summoned a host of unusual musical helpers to the task.
How about plastic bottles, stones, sandpaper, aluminium foil, and a frying pan. It would be tempting to think this would turn into Birtwistle’s chaotic cacophony. But the combination of percussion, scratching and clicking created a sonic landscape reflecting the unexpected twists and turns of Hamlet’s mind perfectly. The audience was left as unsettled as the prince.
Perfect, too, to render the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Canadian bass-baritone John Relyea, one of the most frightening slow-moving stage presences I have encountered.
Set designer, Ralph Myers, places us in a timeless, dazzling white, Carl Hansen style Danish court. The scenery is moved seamlessly during the performance to maintain continuity. The gravedigger scene appears miraculously from almost nowhere.
Alice Babbage, costume designer, decks the court chorus in formal evening dress. Hamlet is the only scruff bag. Well, there is the gravedigger. There is a feeling of timelessness, surely Shakespeare’s intention for his mega play focused on human tragedy.
Hamlet is very different to Dean’s only other opera, Bliss, 2010, based on the disjointed life of Brisbane advertising executive, Harry Roy, save that he shares Hamlet’s psychiatric dilemma. The road from an unknown story about semi-rural Oz to the Danish court story that epitomises Shakespeare for most of the planet was hard for Brett to tread.
There were many second thoughts. Triumph was the least likely outcome. It took nerve to join the ranks of Shakespeare opera composers — Rossini, Verdi, Bellini. This was a very different approach from many of his contemporaries, who favour the fashionable kitchen sink drama cul de sac.
Brett implausibly decided to take on possibly the most challenging task around, bringing this best-known play to the operatic stage, succeeding in making it speak even more powerfully than through voice alone. It knocks its precursor, Ambroise Thomas’ 19th century French Hamlet into a cocked hat.
Triumph it is.