He, Claudius

Who, when, how long?
Derek Jacobi, 1980 (part of BBC's every-freakin'-WS-play project), 3½ hrs.

What sort of Hamlet?
Beebish.

What's missing? Changed?
Scarcely a line--and the completeness made me wonder a couple of times whether I'd heard the lines in the Burton, and thus whether I'd given that production excessive completeness credit.

What's odd?
Nothing's particularly odd, but there are some interesting choices, perhaps most notably a simulated rape by Hamlet of Gertrude in her closet that is clearly the source for Gibson/Zeffirelli. The context is very different in this one, though, because the H-G relationship is not at all sexualized here, so the "rape" can only be about violence and--more to the point--humiliation. Gert is played by Claire Bloom, by the way.

Also notable is the production's making a virtue of budgetary necessity: often there is little or no "set," just an enormous expanse of Beckettian blankness.

Jacobi--who typically delivers his soliloquies directly to the camera--gives some unconventional readings to a few lines. In the "nunnery" exchange, e.g., he emphasizes hath in "It hath made me mad," with a complementary epiphanic mien, as if afraid that his antic disposition has stuck to him like our mothers always told us a weird facial expression would. Both principals are tearful in that sequence--though it begins with a rather obvious low-comedy moment, Ham taking O's book from her and reorienting it to show she'd been "reading" it upside down. The tokens he'd given her seem to consist only of a scarf, with which he feigns to strangle her, alluding, obviously, to a later WS tragedy.

The lead-in Ham-Polonius scene begins w/ Ham entering while Gert and Claudius are still there; Gert approaches Ham, but he recoils (wordlessly, obviously). When Pol takes his leave and Ham replies that there's nothing he'd be as glad to have taken from him, he pulls out his dagger and holds it to his breast for the three "except my life"s, driving Pol away via a threat of suicide.

Then when R&G arrive, Ham delivers "How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz!" to the same character, thus making the same joke of their indistinguishability that readers and audiences always have: he has gotten the name wrong at first stab. [1/3 update: while reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at lunch, I discover that this bit is lifted straight from Stoppard.] Later in the exchange he opens his book and reads--or more likely feigns reading, as he closes the book before finishing--the "what a piece of work" speech.

When Ham reveals his conscience-catching scheme to Horatio, he hands him a copy of the speech he's written. People watching on a 17" screen when the play was first broadcast could probably see that the page was beautifully calligraphed; those watching it in 2007 on a big screen and with the ability to rewind and freeze-frame can see that the dialogue begins:

Ham. Are you honest?
Oph. My lord?

And continues thus.

Ham dons a Death's mask to greet the court arriving for the play. The dumbshow is largely comic, partly explaining the problem of why Claudius doesn't react earlier (though one shot of his face suggests that he's already beginning to be just a bit uneasy). At least one other production that includes both dramas--as most do not--has Claud and Gert chatting and paying scant attention to this preliminary.

During the play Ham grows increasingly manic, actually moving among the players, disrupting their performance to deliver his lines. Claud's ultimate reaction is the most low key I've seen: he doesn't panic, and says "Give me some light" in quiet, measured tones, which leads to the conclusion that Ham has seen what he expected and wanted to see more than what has actually transpired--and indeed, Hor's agreement seems much less certain than is typical.

At Ophelia's grave Laertes spits at Ham in response to "I loved you ever." And in the swordfight Ham immediately knocks L's dagger out of his hand, then lunges for the first hit when L stoops to retrieve it--making L's "No!" the equivalent of a playground "no fair!" Then L wounds Ham when Ham picks up the foil L has dropped by the blade and hands it to L haft away: L takes it and in one motion nicks Ham's wrist with it.

So after this long catalogue of the "odd," I reiterate that there's little really very odd: it's mostly just bits of stagecraft defensible but not automatic from the text--mostly intelligent expansive readings.

Flesh?
Solid, and Ham doesn't jump into O's grave--I'm beginning to think I'm not going to see either variant.

Ghost?
Corporeal, hard, armored, and glowing blue.

Gert-Ham eros?
As indicated above, no.

Other characters?
Of particular note are Patrick Stewart, strong as Claudius (and, just a few years earlier, Sejanus to Jacobi's titular Claudius in the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of the Robert Graves novels about imperial Rome), and an extraordinarily melancholy Horatio--a trait that gives his threat of suicide at the end more force than in any other production I've seen.

Overall, a fine production and in line w/ my grad school-era recollection of that BBC series of the plays: respectful of the texts, but with a blessed lack of awe. Four cetaceous clouds.