On the eve of the apocalypse, seven actors gather to perform Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ all too aware of their impending catastrophic fate.
Real life collides with fiction in ‘The Hamlet Apocalypse’, a play described as “a dystopia of the now generation” being staged at Judith Wright Centre by The Danger Ensemble. Artistic Director for the troupe Steven Mitchell Wright helps dissect this complex treatment of a world classic.
“It’s actually one of those really deceptively simple things,” Steven says.
“It’s kind of exactly what it says on the box – it is seven actors staging ‘Hamlet’ the night the world ends. As time goes on throughout the piece, the play unravels and more of the actors’ real-life personal revelations, discoveries and fears begin to come out.”
Conceived by Steven while on tour with Amanda Palmer in 2009, ‘The Hamlet Apocalypse’ has undergone extensive development from its initial concept in a Boston theatre during a harsh winter.
“I wanted to do something big and it was either going to be about the start of the world or the end of the world,” Steven explains. “I put it to the actors and they picked the end of the world. It was the end of day two or three of development I realised it was becoming a show about actors dealing with the end of the world.
“At the time it was winter in Boston; it was minus 15 degrees Celsius and the theatre was surrounded by snow. There was this real sense of being locked in and captured, and that really impacted how the work was developing.”
On how he came upon ‘Hamlet’ as the vehicle for his apocalyptic drama, Steven says it was one of the first plays he read in development but dismissed it as too big, only returning to it after realising its true worth.
“’Hamlet’ has this beautiful quality about it where it questions what it means to live and how we live, really,” he says. “The way it’s written and often performed, it has an existential crisis about it. When I asked the actors to read ‘Hamlet’ knowing the world was ending, suddenly those quite lofty questions became really urgent. It was hard-hitting when you know you’re going to die in a moment.”
As for the play itself, it’s best to let Steven explain his vision in his own words.
“Essentially the way it works now is the actors have to play ‘Hamlet’ to the best of their ability and there’s a countdown from ten to zero,” he explains. “They don’t know when those countdowns are going to happen when they’re on-stage, I control that from off-stage.
“The easiest way to describe it is that they have a version of ‘Hamlet’ that they have rehearsed, and that version of ‘Hamlet’ goes for longer than the show will go. So as the countdown gets closer to zero they have to throw things out, and there’s also a bunch of personal stuff they have to get through, revelations they have and comments they make on the play.
“What results is at times a funny – sometimes darkly funny – incredibly moving, very personal, really frustrating work. That can often turn out to be abrasive and shrill but we’ve grounded the work in a really strong physicality so it doesn’t get too screechy or melodramatic. There’s a lot of discipline in the work that stops it from going to that.”
