Big Dick

Who, when, how long?
Burton, dir. Gielgud, filmed on stage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 30 June-1 July 1964, 3¼ hrs.

What sort of Hamlet?
Huuuuuge.

What's missing?
This suddenly became a very interesting question late in the play. For most of four acts, the answer was scarcely anything, or scarcely anything I missed, anyway, save to odd flubbed line. (Likewise, next to nothing changed--most significant I noticed, e.g., was the Ghost's "Adieu, adieu, Hamlet, remember me," subbing the name for "adieu" #3.)

Then suddenly, we go straight from Claudius and Laertes after Ophelia's second mad scene to the scene in which arrive first Hamlet's letter announcing his return, then tidings of O's death. Lost is one of the shortest scenes in the play, if not the shortest (go ahead: look it up if it's important to you), thirty lines in which Horatio receives Hamlet's letter of return, containing the story of the pirates. Then in V.2, the long, long final scene, c. 50 ll. are struck in which Ham gives Hor the rest of the story--stealing the letter and forging a replacement--and finally the payoff: ten lines or so at the end, including the Ambassador's speech announcing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's demise. The only suggestion of that survives right after the long stretch of deletion, when Hor does still say, "So G & R go to't" and Ham replies that they asked for it. But "it" is not specified.

If you're cutting only 100 ll. or so from the play, why those lines, that subplot? So that Ham doesn't intentionally kill anyone who doesn't unquestionably deserve it? Would Guilgud really bowdlerize thus? At first I thought maybe he was feuding w/ Tom Stoppard and didn't want to plug his new play, but in fact Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was still two years away.

What's odd?
Costumes and furniture are contemporary and quite bland, save for Osric's feathery hat. The one period costume is worn by the Ghost, about which more anon.

Flesh?
Too too solid. Ham doesn't jump into the grave, which is raised on the bi-level stage.

Ghost?
Wonderful! Gielgud voices him, but he is seen only as an enormous shadow on the backdrop, in helmet and armor. If the nondescript modern dress of the production is meant to be a disconcerting reminder that we're viewing a play performed by our own contemporaries, the violation of that norm for the one otherworldly character whiplashes us from that ordinariness. Of course, it's a device that can work brilliantly on stage but might be hard to analogize on stage.

Hamlet-Gertrude eros?
Zero.

Other people?
Hume Cronyn as Polonius gives the only consistently distinguished performance other than Burton. I'd thought there's only one way to play Pol, but Cronyn portrays him in the first couple of scenes as weightier than usual--in other words, gives a sense of why shallow people might indeed respect him and think what he has to say is worth listening to. After that, his silliness is more interesting because it's a contrast to the better front we've seen he's sometimes capable of presenting.

Sadly, the rest of the cast is thoroughly pedestrian--the guy playing Claudius is an embarrassment--with the notable exception of the woman playing Ophelia, who, without any earlier indication of talent, is superb in the mad scenes, bending her body in various tortured directions and generally manifesting a kineticism that Kate Winslet may have studied when her turn came.

This production falls into the category of more interesting than good, but it's pretty good at that. Burton plays to the people in the cheap seats, and while, of course, the Olivier I saw wasn't playing to any seats at all, it's still about as opposite an approach to the role as is imaginable. "Understatement" clearly was not in Burton's vocabulary. If the film of the play--which, by the way, is not bad: obviously camerawork is limited, but there are a few useful closeups--is interesting, I'll bet a "making of," including unguarded footage from rehearsal, would be fascinating. I can't but think the Gielgud-Burton mixture was a volatile one. Oh, one other note: for all his sawing the air and splitting the ears of the groundlings, Burton excels in simply conveying the meaning of the partly archaic language. Four nunneries.