Hamlet at the National Ballet

What a weekend!  The National Ballet of Canada gave the North American premiere of Kevin O'Day's full length ballet Hamlet and I was there to see it -- twice!!!

It's a unique problem to be sure.  How do you convert one of the most famous of all plays, with more famous quotes than almost any other single work of literature, into music and dance?  Simply put, you have to forget that it is a play and retell the story in a different way.

That doesn't mean changing the story.  Indeed, the only really noticeable changes are (1) the elimination of Hamlet's trip to England and (2) the exposure of the king's murder by two travelling dancers instead of travelling actors.  Otherwise the events of Hamlet are all there, but in severely compressed form.  What dominates this balletic version is the emotional turmoil of Hamlet himself, and the answering turmoil that he gradually stirs up in all the other characters due to his obsession.

The choreography is modern, angular, full of sudden starts and stops and turns and violent lifts and throws.  This is not "pretty" like a traditional classical ballet at all.  The music is a match for the choreography, and includes computerized random sampling and playback of the live instruments, creating a unique series of echoes and repetitions.

Now the performers:

                                                   Conflict of Interest Alert!!!!
                                       (hee hee -- Robert Stephen is my nephew)

On Friday night Guillaume Cote danced Hamlet, and did so with great passion and energy (an absolute prerequisite for this stamina-challenging monster of a role).  At the same time there was always a hint of a princely veneer, appropriate to be sure, a smoothness which perhaps harked back to the more traditional princes of the classical repertoire.  His Ophelia was Heather Ogden, and her performance showed us Ophelia as a sweet and innocent girl.

Saturday afternoon's Hamlet was Robert Stephen, a late substitution for an injured Naoya Ebe.  Stephen's Hamlet was every bit as powerful as Cote's but a little more raw-edged -- a primal scream where Cote shaped the part into something resembling the powerful poetry of Shakespeare.  This was a minor difference, more a matter of a subtle change of tone than a major interpretive switch.  Stephen's Ophelia, Elena Lobsanova, was likewise more edgy than Ogden to a small degree.  Both did a splendid job in the harrowing scene of Ophelia's madness and death.

Indeed, both casts of leads were tremendous, in their different ways, and all the roles were filled with distinction in both performances.  However, the one other character in the ballet who really stuck in my mind was Queen Gertrude.  In Kevin O'Day's view of Hamlet, the stamp of the father on the son is the critical element, but that doesn't stop his Gertrude from being a major stage presence -- often given a very prominent position and allowed to centre the action.  Her choreography ranges across a wide gamut -- queenly one minute, practically eating fire the next, but never deteriorating into merely a shrew.  This gives her a kind of tragic intensity that most stage productions can't allow her.  Both Stephanie Hutchison (Friday night) and Alejandra Perez-Gomez (Saturday afternoon) rose splendidly to the challenge of this role.

For me, this tremendous production had only one serious drawback.  Staged in front of a severe and limiting black set, it was so dimly lit that it was actually difficult at many times to see the faces and sense the emotional state of the dancers.  Just a little bit more light would have made a huge difference to this problem.  But overall, a stunning example of modern dance drama at its best.  Five stars plus!