Anti-Hamlet

Anti-Hamlet is a clever slick journey opening with Mark Wilson as Hamlet engaging the audience with fabulous sparkling heightened energy.  This energy is embraced by all actors and doesn’t let up as we are taken on a fast a wild ride and lengthy ride through a sort of Australian ‘boy’s own’ contemporary Australian Hamlet, which, mainly through their absence, highlights aspects of Shakespeare’s original. 

It offers thought provoking perspectives for those who know the text.  For those who don’t, I would hazard a guess, it is a wacky sort of parody of aspects of Australian politics that replaces God with Sigmund Freud and contains an eye opening and kind of shocking visceral explanation of the Oedipus Complex.

There is never a dull moment in this wacky romp and Wilson has made some great choices.  However his characters are pretty two-dimensional but an excellent, mostly very experienced, troupe of actors serve the ideas and flow of the whole wonderfully.

Natasha Flowers plays an Ophelia who gets off very lightly as a sort of bland clever young woman, a Rhodes Scholar who shrewdly spots Hamlet’s homosexuality before it makes mince meat of both of them (assuming it was one of the difficulties in their relationship).  However, wittily she does end up in a swimming pool. 

Horatio, played by Marcus McKenzie, hovers generally being useful and perhaps a bit pedantic.  Brian Lipson makes a great Freud who replaces the sometimes wise but mostly silly Polonius, although unlike Polonius he is indestructible and omnipresent.  Marco Chiappi is energetic and brazen as a Claudius who is nowhere near as personally threatening to Hamlet as Shakespeare’s invention.  Edward Bernays is a very sleazy politician played as a total controlling slime by recent VCA graduate Charles Purcell.

But it is Natasha Herbert who ‘takes the cake.’   She is glorious as a glamorous Gertrude who is dressed for cocktail party after cocktail party.   Much more than a coat hanger, Herbert’s Gertrude is sublimely over the top.  It is wonderful watching a usually serious actor throw herself successfully and courageously at such an outrageous piece, her range of emotional states is extensive. 

In Anti-Hamlet, Wilson’s Hamlet is not riddled with maudlin self-doubt and indecision and there is not a ghost, grave or a skull in sight.

Sound (Tom Backhaus) is kept to a minimum.   Set design by Romaine Harper is austere and practical – indicative of a music concert stage.  It left me wondering if the whole would feel less like a work in progress if it had a more theatrical staging.

This is a work that is likely to be referred to often in years to come.

Suzanne Sandow

Credits

Associate Artist - Olivia Monticciolo

Set and Costume Design – Romaine Harper

Lighting Design – Amelia Lever-Davidson

Sound Design – Tom Backhaus

Dramaturg and Producer – Mark Pritchard

Cast:  Marco Chiappi, Natascha Flowers, Natasha Herbert, Brian Lipson, Marcus McKenzie, Charles Purcell and Mark Wilson

Photographer: Sarah Walker