A Prince of Denmark

When I picked up the DVD for the RSC's 2009 production of Hamlet, my first thought was: "David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius? This should rock!"

Sometime later I thought: "Wait a minute, one of those two has already done this..."

It turns out I was right - Patrick Steward played Claudius opposite Derek Jacobi's Hamlet in the BBC film version back in 1980. I had largely blocked that from my memory, due to the fact that it was extremely boring.

Maybe it was the video quality of the tape I watched in high school, but it seemed too dark and muted to be able to really understand what was happening on screen half the time, and the actors were all so... "actorly" that it was hard to actually engage with the drive of the story. Plus, as a teenager, I couldn't quite forgive or accept the fact that Jacobi was clearly around the same age (maybe older) than the actors playing his "parents".

I get that Hamlet is the ultimate "actor's role", and everyone who has every played him wants to be imortalised as one of the definitive Hamlets. I realise that's why it is so tempting for an actor who played Hamlet on stage in his 30s to have a crack at the role on screen twenty years later... but it's just not good. Hamlet is a young man's role, and needs youthful engergy rather than mature gravitas.

This can be a bit odd, in the grand scheme of things, because I felt Branagh was too old for the role when he filmed it at the age of 36, but Tennant seemed to carry off the youthfulness much better, even though he was 38. Olivier was 37, and seemed more "wet" than "youthful", and Gibson was 34 but looked like he was trying to hard to act young and reckless. Branagh didn't really try to act youthful, which is guess is better than trying and failing.

Jacobi, though, was just too old. He should have let someone else play the role on screen. Same with Ethan Hawke. Not because he was too old for the role (at 29 he was the perfect age), but because he was terrible.

I thought the Hawke film would have been worth watching just to see Julia Styles in the role of Ophelia. She wasn't half bad, but the rest of the film was rubbish. It was really only interesting for the fencing scene on the rooftop. Apart from that, it just gave you the opportunity to note that Ethan Hawke belongs with Keanu Reeves in the catagory of "actors who should never be allowed to perform Shakespeare again".

There were, oddly, a few similarities between the Hawke version, which I didn't like at all, and the Tennant version, which I quite enjoyed. Both shifted the play out of it's original historical setting to something more "nowish" - which allowed Hamlet to dress like a modern slob at points. The way both Hamlets used hand-held cameras was also a similarity. Another was the way some scenes just didn't fit at all in this new setting.

The fencing scenes were strangely disjointed in both films because of the modernisation. In a historical context it makes perfect sense for the young men to all be involved in sword sports. It would have been a fairly common thing for men of their station to do. But when everything has been moved up to the 21st Century, fencing becomes more of a specialty activity and it's oddly surprising to have them suddenly put on white jackets and start waving swords around.

I felt as if it was a bit of a deus ex machina moment in both films. "Oh, we need to stab people with poison things now so... tada! They fence! Isn't that neat?"

I don't know why, but I would have preferred to see the fencing gear earlier in the piece. Someone should have been playing with a sword, or practising some moves, or polishing their fencing trophies... anything. It just needed some forshadowing in the modernised version to make it seem less contrived.

Mind you, it's been so long since I saw the Hawke version that I can't say for certain they didn't do this. I just remember feeling the scene was so out of place in a modernisation that it should have been replaced with some other activity - a game of pool or something.

I did enjoy Tennant's portrayal of Hamlet, - he was the first actor I've seen who made me understand that Hamlet was actually sad (grieving the loss of someone he loved very much) and not just depressed - but I also felt the film was lacking something. I can't put my finger on it.

Maybe I've just seen too many version of Hamlet. They all have different strengths and weaknesses and you will never find one that hits every mark for every viewer.

Wonder who'll be in the next one?

My Fair Freddy

"She married Freddy, of course."

For some reason I've always remembered this line as being something George Bernard Shaw (GBS) wrote in his "sequel" to Pygmalion (the play better known in its musical incarnation as My Fair Lady). On rereading that story recently, I discovered it wasn't there. Not only wasn't it the first line, which is where I thought I remembered it being, but it wasn't in the text at all.

In the copy of Pygmalion I own (a second hand copy bought for a dollar back when I was a teenager), GBS has provided both a prologue and an epilogue for the play. In the prologue he tells of one of the professors of phonetics he knew back in the 1870s who formed a large part of the inspiration for Henry Higgins. In the epilogue he provides the "sequel" - telling us what happened to Eliza (and some of the other characters) after the events in the play had finished.

When I first read this story, as a teenager, I found it vaguely depressing. Like many people who loved the tension between Liza and Higgins, I wanted the play to be a love story. At the time, I thought the only fit sequel to the play would involve Liza eventually taming and marrying Higgins. The idea that she would settle for Freddy, of all people, just seemed like a let-down.

I think I've been at a disadvantage because I've only ever seen Freddy performed as something of a non-entity. Whenever I've watched the movie or stage production of My Fair Lady, Freddy comes across as being a bit of a sap, really. But, reading over the play again recently, I've noticed this isn't in the play at all.

Freddy can be played as a sap, or he can be played as the Prince Charming of this particular Cinderella story. The script supports either interpretation.

And there's something else the script supports: Freddy knows.

At the very beginning of the play, Freddy gets a very good look at Liza's face when they bump into each other. They look eyes with each other just as a lightening strike illuminates the scene with a clap of thunder.

Then he comes back and talks to her again before that scene is over - no doubt paying attention to this strange woman who somehow knew his name (just as his mother had before him).

When he meets her later, in Mrs Higgins' parlour, his first words to her are "I've certainly had the pleasure". Granted, he could just be a bit of a vague fool, like his mother and sister appear to be... Or he could be a henpecked man who has met someone beautiful and fascinating and has decided to play along with this interesting game she seems to be playing.

Freddy has had it rough. He was born into the upper echelons of society, but his family is broke. He was raised to be the kind of person who doesn't need to work, but he can't afford to maintain that position. His mother and sister treat him like an idiot, and he's constantly trying to follow behind them and keep up appearances as they go from one social engagement to another (well, insofar as they can afford it). He's probably expected to marry someone just like them - but even if he wanted to, would he be able to afford it? And then, suddenly, this gorgeous young woman is dragged into his world, and it's the most interesting thing he's ever encountered in his boring, henpecked existence. Is it any wonder he's happiest when he's hanging around outside her house?

At the end of the play Eliza makes it clear that Freddy isn't stupid, they've been in contact quite steadily during the past few months, and she knows he loves her. She never says anything to indicate Freddy is someone she is "putting up with", or that she doesn't and could never return his affection. In fact, depending on how you played her, it could be quite obvious that she loves him too, but is still trying to figure out what she wants from Higgins.

It turns out Pygmalion is a love story after all, but we're so distracted by the relationship between Cinderella and her Fairy Godfather that it's easy for us to miss the real love story between our courageous heroine and her slightly goofy Prince Charming.

Reading the "sequel" again in this light, it's so obviously right. That's exactly what should happen. Eliza should marry Freddy, and they should start a flower shop. They both happen to be fish-out-of-water in this bold new middle class world (as she came from the lower classes and he from the upper); they they should struggle together to make a go of it. Higgins is someone who should always be an important part of her life, but like a godfather, not like a lover.

As GBS himself points out - Galatea could never really love Pygmalion, he's too godlike.

And Freddy? Well Freddy deserves more attention. He's so subtly drawn in the play that he can be easily over looked, and given short shrift in performance, but I think it throws the play into a whole new light if you work on the assumption that he isn't an idiot, and he knows exactly who she is - and doesn't care.

You know, I think Freddy just became my favourite character.