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| What Hamlet can teach the Labour leadership about getting things right | |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| Thank goodness, not for the first time but especially now, that there is so much more to life than the Labour party. Thank goodness for the high hills, for test cricket, and for the symphonies of Sibelius. And thank goodness, this week in particular, for Hamlet. | Thank goodness, not for the first time but especially now, that there is so much more to life than the Labour party. Thank goodness for the high hills, for test cricket, and for the symphonies of Sibelius. And thank goodness, this week in particular, for Hamlet. |
| The current production of Hamlet at London’s Barbican theatre is providing almost as much action off-stage as on. Yet the official first night is not until Tuesday, and one of the most reassuring nostrums in the theatre is the enduring thespian optimism that everything will be all right on the night. Worldly wisdom says this is impossible. Yet even Shakespeare took this view. | The current production of Hamlet at London’s Barbican theatre is providing almost as much action off-stage as on. Yet the official first night is not until Tuesday, and one of the most reassuring nostrums in the theatre is the enduring thespian optimism that everything will be all right on the night. Worldly wisdom says this is impossible. Yet even Shakespeare took this view. |
| Related: The Guardian view on Hamlet: time to cool the hysteria | Editorial | Related: The Guardian view on Hamlet: time to cool the hysteria | Editorial |
| In one of the earliest written-down Quarto versions of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark pensively paces the stage about an hour into the drama and delivers a clunky soliloquy which begins with the matchless words: “To be or not to be, aye, there’s the point, / To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all.” | In one of the earliest written-down Quarto versions of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark pensively paces the stage about an hour into the drama and delivers a clunky soliloquy which begins with the matchless words: “To be or not to be, aye, there’s the point, / To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all.” |
| Perhaps, we may be permitted to fantasise, it was only at the very last run-through that the national poet jumped excitedly up on to the stage and stopped Richard Burbage, or whoever it was, in mid-flow to suggest that the speech might just work a bit better with a few changes. Perhaps Burbage threw a wobbly. And perhaps, trouper that he was, Burbage then calmed down and read the new and longer version and thought, we might manage to make something of this. | Perhaps, we may be permitted to fantasise, it was only at the very last run-through that the national poet jumped excitedly up on to the stage and stopped Richard Burbage, or whoever it was, in mid-flow to suggest that the speech might just work a bit better with a few changes. Perhaps Burbage threw a wobbly. And perhaps, trouper that he was, Burbage then calmed down and read the new and longer version and thought, we might manage to make something of this. |
| Not everything magically comes right on the night. Getting things right is hard work, even for geniuses | Not everything magically comes right on the night. Getting things right is hard work, even for geniuses |
| Because, if that’s what happened, it was definitely the right call. The point is not that everything magically comes right on the night but that getting things right is hard work, even for geniuses. Hamlet didn’t drop fully formed from the heavens on to Shakespeare’s desk. It went up blind allies and got lost in crossings out and tangled plot lines before emerging as the play we know. | Because, if that’s what happened, it was definitely the right call. The point is not that everything magically comes right on the night but that getting things right is hard work, even for geniuses. Hamlet didn’t drop fully formed from the heavens on to Shakespeare’s desk. It went up blind allies and got lost in crossings out and tangled plot lines before emerging as the play we know. |
| Even Mozart, whom we often think of as pouring out masterpieces as though turning on a tap, spent hours altering, correcting, cutting and reordering his music. Flaubert sometimes spent an entire day working up a single sentence. The wrestling doesn’t always solve all the problems. But it worked for Shakespeare in the final version of his most famous soliloquy. | Even Mozart, whom we often think of as pouring out masterpieces as though turning on a tap, spent hours altering, correcting, cutting and reordering his music. Flaubert sometimes spent an entire day working up a single sentence. The wrestling doesn’t always solve all the problems. But it worked for Shakespeare in the final version of his most famous soliloquy. |
| U-turns and blind alleys have notoriously marked the Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch that finally opens next week. When I saw a preview a few days ago, the play opened with Hamlet rooting around in his childhood possessions and speaking the famous soliloquy – in the full first folio version – before the curtain rose on the Danish court. Now the speech is back in its proper place in the third act of the play and the opening scene has been reinstated. But there a few more previews to go, so who knows. | U-turns and blind alleys have notoriously marked the Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch that finally opens next week. When I saw a preview a few days ago, the play opened with Hamlet rooting around in his childhood possessions and speaking the famous soliloquy – in the full first folio version – before the curtain rose on the Danish court. Now the speech is back in its proper place in the third act of the play and the opening scene has been reinstated. But there a few more previews to go, so who knows. |
| Hamlet is a dependable witness for the optimists who think difficult things can come out right in the end if people think and make sensible choices. Any production of Hamlet faces decisions about what to cut from a very long text – the need to get the audience home at a reasonable hour means a complete Hamlet is rare. So the people behind the Cumberbatch version weren’t doing anything outrageous by cutting Hamlet, or even by rearranging it a bit. Such things happen regularly in productions of Mozart operas without anyone even noticing. | Hamlet is a dependable witness for the optimists who think difficult things can come out right in the end if people think and make sensible choices. Any production of Hamlet faces decisions about what to cut from a very long text – the need to get the audience home at a reasonable hour means a complete Hamlet is rare. So the people behind the Cumberbatch version weren’t doing anything outrageous by cutting Hamlet, or even by rearranging it a bit. Such things happen regularly in productions of Mozart operas without anyone even noticing. |
| The good thing about the Barbican’s Hamlet is that they were able to spot in time where the problem was leading them. The process of rehearsal and the weeks of preview performances have given the people in charge an inbuilt opportunity to see which of their ideas worked and which didn’t. | The good thing about the Barbican’s Hamlet is that they were able to spot in time where the problem was leading them. The process of rehearsal and the weeks of preview performances have given the people in charge an inbuilt opportunity to see which of their ideas worked and which didn’t. |
| In politics, this is sometimes called doing what works. In a less naughty political world than ours, it would be standard procedure to have a rehearsal and preview period before going ahead with any important policy or initiative. The great administrators of the past did this naturally. Nowadays, the piloting of new policy, the political equivalent of the theatrical preview, is a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. | In politics, this is sometimes called doing what works. In a less naughty political world than ours, it would be standard procedure to have a rehearsal and preview period before going ahead with any important policy or initiative. The great administrators of the past did this naturally. Nowadays, the piloting of new policy, the political equivalent of the theatrical preview, is a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. |
| Anthony King and Ivor Crewe point out in their book The Blunders of Our Governments that nothing stands out more prominently or frequently in Britain’s governmental failings over many years than the divorce between those who devise a policy and those who carry it out. When someone in power has a stupid idea, it is difficult to stop, because they remain ensconced in a remote office – like the chateau generals of the first world war – while others struggle to implement the idea on the front line. Politics could therefore learn from the arts’ rehearsal and preview periods. | Anthony King and Ivor Crewe point out in their book The Blunders of Our Governments that nothing stands out more prominently or frequently in Britain’s governmental failings over many years than the divorce between those who devise a policy and those who carry it out. When someone in power has a stupid idea, it is difficult to stop, because they remain ensconced in a remote office – like the chateau generals of the first world war – while others struggle to implement the idea on the front line. Politics could therefore learn from the arts’ rehearsal and preview periods. |
| This brings us back inevitably to the Labour party leadership contest. The electoral system that was forged – and forged is the appropriate word – under Ed Miliband was a classic piece of chateau generalship. No one around the last Labour leader, and certainly not Miliband himself, seemed to give serious thought to how their new electoral system would work in practice. What mattered to them was closing down a row that Miliband had picked with the unions. As a result, when Miliband walked away in May, he left Labour going to sea in an electoral system that leaked like a sieve. | This brings us back inevitably to the Labour party leadership contest. The electoral system that was forged – and forged is the appropriate word – under Ed Miliband was a classic piece of chateau generalship. No one around the last Labour leader, and certainly not Miliband himself, seemed to give serious thought to how their new electoral system would work in practice. What mattered to them was closing down a row that Miliband had picked with the unions. As a result, when Miliband walked away in May, he left Labour going to sea in an electoral system that leaked like a sieve. |
| Politicians like to see themselves as people who know how the world works. They tend to disdain artists as impractical dreamers. But the Barbican Hamlet has ended up in the right place because the theatrical system had checks and balances that make it possible to correct a foolish decision. For Labour, on the other hand, the rest is silence. | Politicians like to see themselves as people who know how the world works. They tend to disdain artists as impractical dreamers. But the Barbican Hamlet has ended up in the right place because the theatrical system had checks and balances that make it possible to correct a foolish decision. For Labour, on the other hand, the rest is silence. |