Theatre review: Globe to Globe: Hamlet

NZ actor Rawiri Paratene in Globe to Globe Hamlet. Photo / Supplied

What: Globe to Globe: Hamlet
Where: SkyCity Theatre, to June 5
Reviewer: Paul Simei-Barton

Having participated in launching the Globe to Globe project with a remarkable Maori language version of Troilus & Cressida, it is wonderfully appropriate to see Rawiri Paratene bringing it all back home with a multicultural cast breathing fresh life into Shakespeare's best known work.

Fittingly for a production embarking on an exhaustive world tour, the show revolves around the timeless image of travelling players.

The makeshift set littered with packing crates creates the sense of a theatre troupe coming ashore in a busy shipping port and the ensemble effortlessly take up a variety of instruments for a soundtrack filled with joyfully exuberant renditions of traditional folk songs.

As the cast go about their work it is clear that Hamlet is in the hands of seasoned professionals deeply committed to their craft and passionate in their engagement with Shakespeare's language.

Eschewing any overarching concept, directors Dominic Dromgoole and Bill Buckhurst deliver a crisp, energetic production that remains open to multiple interpretations and creates a space for audiences to find their own meanings.

Instead of the familiar image of Hamlet as the moody prophet of personal authenticity, Ladi Emeruwa gives us as an alert, engaged young man grappling with a corrupt world while paralysed by a sense of his own inadequacy. It is an immediately recognisable picture of modern man who over-thinks everything and is addicted to the thoroughly contemporary vices of deferment and distraction.

The necessity for cast-doubling becomes one of the show's great strength's with a brilliantly audacious staging of the play within the play that has Claudius and Gertrude doubling as performers in the play they are watching.

Perhaps the most startling moment of the show comes when Miranda Foster, who has established Gertrude as a fragile, tight-lipped bundle of conflicting emotions, suddenly cuts loose and throws herself into the role of the player queen Baptista as she delivers an extravagantly melodramatic declaration of her undying faithfulness.

Similarly Rawiri Paratene's compelling portrayal of Claudius as an astute Machiavellian politician is given a revealing echo by having him also play the imperious and archaic ghost of the old King Hamlet.

Among the show's many delights is hearing actors skillfully utilising the rhythm of Shakespearian speech to convey emotion and highlight the poetic quality of the text.

This is superbly exemplified by John Dougall rattling off Polonius' ponderous speechifying with the breathless pace of a horse race commentary and in a different vein by Jennifer Leong's painfully stilted delivery of Ophelia's love songs.

The Globe to Globe initiative aims to revitalise interest in Shakespeare and one hopes local companies will note the speed with which the show sold out its season.

It sends a clear signal that Auckland audiences are hungry for more of the Bard.