This was like no other production of Hamlet I have been to - although it was hard to beat seeing it outdoors at sunset in the ruins of a castle overlooking the Main River...
This time The Factory were performing in the large basement of Blackwells bookstore in central Oxford. We were allowed in the bookstore to browse before the show and we were asked to bring props for the actors to use... At the beginning of the show they used a few rounds of scissors-paper-stone to determine who would play which parts! Apparently they all learn all the lines and can adapt to which ever... It certainly adds a new dimension to acting -not knowing your role or your props until the night!
But this spontaneity seemed to add to the excitement and it was the first time I had seen females playing Hamlet and his father's ghost. Perhaps Hamlet acted out his madness more than I had seen or imagined before, but l was prepared to accept this response to the situation...
The stage was bare and the actors jumped from one bookshelf to another and raced up and down the stairs through the audience... It felt like a different sort of theatre in the round .
Like every performance of Shakespeare, there was quite a build up of tension towards the final scene which was played out with toy tigers instead of long blades in quite a melodramatic way...
I walked away feeling entertained and challenged to expand my view about acting in real time...
