As the audience enters the theatre, we hear the resonating voice of Richard Burton in a recorded extract from his renowned portrayal of Hamlet.
The famous names who have played the Danish Prince – Irving, Gielguid, Olivier, Burton – is a recurring motif. As the lights dim to an almost black out, Michael, an actor, stands in spotlight at a microphone, clutching Yorick’s skull. As he explains, “I have this thing, I think I am Hamlet and Hamlet is me. I want to say, ‘To be or not to be.’
The setting is present day, New York; Michael is 39 and was adopted as a baby. He has an obsession not just with playing Hamlet, but with finding his birth mother. Serendipity intervenes when, in a second hand bookstore, he finds a 1975 Journal revealing the private thoughts and secrets of a young actress while performing Ophelia. In this production 40 years ago, Hamlet was played by Phillip Rickers with whom she engages in a more intimate relationship off stage.
Time for a spot of Sam Spade sleuthing, film noir style, to track down Ophelia - Anna May Miller. With his rather awkward, nerdy personality, Spencer Aste portrays Michael like a neurotic “Woody Allen” intellectual, womaniser, terrified of failure and rejection. Although he has a girlfriend, he sleeps around which for him is nothing more than flirting.
He succeeds in meeting Anna May, now in her sixties, and offers her the role of Gertrude in his own new radical version of Hamlet. But his motive is deeply personal, the opportunity to confront this woman with a secret past, taking the concept of The Mousetrap, the play’s the thing to catch the conscience of .. the Queen.
Hollywood actress Annette O’Toole, takes on the double role, switching from the laid back, hard drinking, 60-something, hippy, Anna May, to the elegantly regal grand dame, Gertrude. With her husky voice, she growls and prowls around the stage like a tigress.
The rehearsal room set has a mattress on the floor to denote Gertrude’s boudoir. In the Closet scene, Hamlet accosts his mother, accusing her of immoral behaviour, “ In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love ..” seducing Claudius so soon after the King's death.
And so in this game of role playing, they move between conversations as Michael and Anna May and rehearsals as Hamlet and Gertude. With two microphone stands centre stage, a series of powerful soliloquies are performed with dramatic, almost rock star effect. Hamlet’s strange, strained relationship with Gertrude is mirrored against Michael’s quest to seek maternal love and fight his own slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
At the 2013 EIF, the Wooster Group brought their brilliant, breathtaking version of Hamlet, in which the actors duplicate Richard Burton and the cast performances from the 1964 movie of the Broadway production, shown on a backdrop screen.
In similar vein, "Hamlet in Bed" is a clever, innovative homage to the timeless, iconic role of Hamlet. The addition of more recorded extracts and film footage - perhaps illustrating the vintage Miller-Rickers production, would dramatise Michael’s psychological obsession, channelling Hamlet into his psyche and enhance the play within a play concept.
Performance times:
3- 29 August (not 10, 16,23) @ 14.10.
Ticket prices: £9.00 (£8.00), £10.50 (£9.50), £ 11.50 (£10.50)