Unlike Pinocchio, Hamnet was a real boy.
Unlike Geppetto, Shakespeare wasn’t involved in his son’s life. Which character in this play is actually telling the truth, however, is an unsolvable mystery. Who is more immortal – the one who was lived mostly on the page, or the one who wrote the pages?
Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd’s Dead Centre Theatre Company has designed a multidimensional challenge for the senses and the mind while using a combination of live and dead video. Perhaps that concept cannot even be described thoroughly without being experienced.
A one man (at a time) play where we are privy to the reality and the apparition simultaneously, of a fatherless child and a grieving father. Hamnet (played by debutant Aran Murphy – this is his fourth ever show) wrestles with the question of being or not, and what makes a great man.
Writer Bush describes the genesis of the show after having heard about Shakespeare’s son, and the first scene is designed to actually take place before the play is witnessed – as the name unfolds in the imagination of a viewer. Of Hamnet: “we know nothing about him, and when there’s nothing to be known, you can just invent.”
Aran’s favourite part of the play is the dance he does with his holographic father. He says talking to a hologram wasn’t so hard, and that the good thing about plays is that once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. He does add, however, that this particular skill is not something he can really tell his friends about: “hey, I can talk to no one”.
Riffing with strangers (one audience member is involved in the first scene) is his second favourite element. Bush praised Aran’s grasp of the purpose of rehearsal.
The play itself is a Shakespearean nightmare. Bush and co-writer/director Ben attempted to collate all the moments in the original plays where parents talked to their children, but it was too conflicting. Instead there are sentiments expressed by father Shakespeare that were taken from King Lear, and King John.
“There’s a liminal space in the cultural ritual of theatre, where the audience are ghosts”, Bush said.
Indeed, that landscape was well created here, with visuals, sound and an exquisite script and prop placement, leaving room in the conversation to be perpetually continued.
