August 4, 2008
Gregory Doran, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production of Hamlet, is answering two very important questions about the play. First, why did he cast David Tennant in the role of Hamlet? Second, how does a director cut Shakespeare’s longest play down to a reasonable running length?
Doran answers the first question in an interview with Hermione Hoby of The Observer. Doran reveals, “A good idea for a Shakespeare tends to fire on several cylinders; one of them is the actor and one of them is the timing. I was watching Meet the Ancestors and saw David in this church wearing a black greatcoat and he picked up a skull. I texted him and said, ‘Saw your audition for Hamlet on the telly’.”
Doran also discusses why he dislikes ‘mobile-phone Shakespeare’ and how he’s handling the stress of his much-anticipated production.
Read the complete Observer interview.
In a separate essay for The Guardian, Doran discusses trimming the text of Hamlet. Unaltered, the play takes more than four hours to perform. Doran’s production runs three hours and thirty-five minutes. But cutting Shakespeare isn’t a task to be taken lightly. In the essay, Doran says that a full-length Hamlet will frighten audience members away while an over-pruned version risks patronizing them. He explains, “Some directors cut the opening scene on the battlements. Others cut Voltemand and Cornelius, the ambassadors to Norway, and Polonius’s spy, Reynaldo, is frequently elbowed out. But all these characters reinforce the politics of the play, and the familiar world of hypersurveillance that operates in Elsinore. Then there’s Fortinbras, the action hero who happens to wander into the body-strewn court and ends the play. He often gets the boot. But he provides the play’s international perspective.”
But cut he must and cut he did. Doran discusses the nips and tucks he make to the play including his reason for moving Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech.
Read the complete essay in The Guardian.
Watch the clip of Who Do You Think You Are? that ispired Doran to cast Tennant.
Hamlet runs at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, 24 July – 15 November.
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