Hamlet

Synopsis: A video recording, using a single, fixed camera, of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1989 production of Hamlet. Directed by Ron Daniels with Mark Rylance in the title role.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Recording date: 1 Sep 1989
Duration: 180 mins

General: Rylance notably played the middle scenes in pyjamas in this celebrated production.
History: Press night 16 April 1989. The production later toured in the UK and in the United States for two year with Rylance retaining the title role.
Stills: Stills from, and design notes on, the production are available on the Arts and Humanities Performing Arts Data Service (AHDS) at http://ahds.ac.uk/performingarts/collections/designing-shakespeare.htm
Reviews: `Daniels and his designer, Antony McDonald, have done something rare in modern Hamlets. They have devised stage settings which become the ideal correlative and embodiment of Hamlet’s riven state of mind. McDonald’s set is a masterpiece of dislocation and disturbance, an alliance of the semi-surreal and the expressionistic. The palace is viewed through the perspective of an asymmetrical proscenium frame; its walls dizzily tilting as if about to fall; the central windows crazily askew... Rylance’s riveting tremulo Hamlet is a performance which is often exquisite and affecting in its seesaw of misery and rage and sense of futility. It is the appearance of the ghost which precipitates his breakup. His "antic disposition" is not part of a grand revenge design, but a symptom of his incipient mania’. Nicholas de Jongh, The Guardian 25 November 1989.

Name: Royal Shakespeare Company
Web: https://www.rsc.org.uk External site opens in new window
Address: Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Waterside
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
CV37 6BB

British Universities Film & Video Council