This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/17/hurray-riz-ahmed-netflix-hamlet-a-list-moratorium
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Hurray for Riz Ahmed’s Netflix Dane – but is it time for a moratorium on A-list Hamlets? | Hurray for Riz Ahmed’s Netflix Dane – but is it time for a moratorium on A-list Hamlets? |
| (21 days later) | |
| To be or not to be? It’s not so much the question as it is a Netflix negotiation: Riz Ahmed, Emmy winner, Star Wars star, him from Four Lions, is in hotly reported talks to see his Hamlet staged on your laptop screen. It’s not quite the Olivier at the National Theatre – Ahmed’s contemporary adaptation, “set in a modern-day London of economic and political uncertainty”, will be seen by far younger audiences, for one. But it does work to flex one of the most persistent myths in acting-land: that the chance to play Hamlet is the greatest gig of all. The actor’s white whale. The most serious mark of the most serious thespian (and, yes, please ignore the fact that it also gave us The Lion King musical). | To be or not to be? It’s not so much the question as it is a Netflix negotiation: Riz Ahmed, Emmy winner, Star Wars star, him from Four Lions, is in hotly reported talks to see his Hamlet staged on your laptop screen. It’s not quite the Olivier at the National Theatre – Ahmed’s contemporary adaptation, “set in a modern-day London of economic and political uncertainty”, will be seen by far younger audiences, for one. But it does work to flex one of the most persistent myths in acting-land: that the chance to play Hamlet is the greatest gig of all. The actor’s white whale. The most serious mark of the most serious thespian (and, yes, please ignore the fact that it also gave us The Lion King musical). |
| Except, well, is it though? No shade to Shakespeare, chill out everyone: this isn’t quite a revisionist reading on what is permanently stamped The Greatest Play Ever Written – ©everyone’s English teacher. More, a stock take of artistic imagination: if, in any given year, somewhere up and down the UK, you can see a starry production of Hamlet being staged with Big-Name Acclaimed Actors showing off their Big-Name Acclaimed Acting Chops, then the cachet of that role is reduced. No question. It’s the basic economics of scarcity: when every Tom (Hiddleston), Dick (Burton) and Jude Law has had a crack at moodily wafting on stage, like a Smiths fan in search of legitimate melancholy, then theatre’s great and good might consider that it is time to call a moratorium on more Hamlets. For a few years at least. There are only so many versions of a big-name actor in the same play that Michael Billington should have to watch. | Except, well, is it though? No shade to Shakespeare, chill out everyone: this isn’t quite a revisionist reading on what is permanently stamped The Greatest Play Ever Written – ©everyone’s English teacher. More, a stock take of artistic imagination: if, in any given year, somewhere up and down the UK, you can see a starry production of Hamlet being staged with Big-Name Acclaimed Actors showing off their Big-Name Acclaimed Acting Chops, then the cachet of that role is reduced. No question. It’s the basic economics of scarcity: when every Tom (Hiddleston), Dick (Burton) and Jude Law has had a crack at moodily wafting on stage, like a Smiths fan in search of legitimate melancholy, then theatre’s great and good might consider that it is time to call a moratorium on more Hamlets. For a few years at least. There are only so many versions of a big-name actor in the same play that Michael Billington should have to watch. |
| This year, we have already seen Hiddleston do his Kenneth Branagh-directed take at Rada. (Well, except we didn’t, because the run was exclusively limited to about 15 seats won in an exclusive lottery with the kind of mega-hype the actual national lottery can’t manage.) There has also been Andrew Scott doing his Dane at the Almeida (since transferred to the West End). | This year, we have already seen Hiddleston do his Kenneth Branagh-directed take at Rada. (Well, except we didn’t, because the run was exclusively limited to about 15 seats won in an exclusive lottery with the kind of mega-hype the actual national lottery can’t manage.) There has also been Andrew Scott doing his Dane at the Almeida (since transferred to the West End). |
| In my very first job as a journalist, the surprise and sudden success of 23-year-old Ben Whishaw in Trevor Nunn’s 2004 Hamlet had editors frothing; mine didn’t get the interview she wanted from this then unknown star and I was immediately dispatched to doorstep his friends and family to “find the story he won’t tell us”. Hamlet-fever, I have learned, is very real. | In my very first job as a journalist, the surprise and sudden success of 23-year-old Ben Whishaw in Trevor Nunn’s 2004 Hamlet had editors frothing; mine didn’t get the interview she wanted from this then unknown star and I was immediately dispatched to doorstep his friends and family to “find the story he won’t tell us”. Hamlet-fever, I have learned, is very real. |
| David Tennant’s 2008 RSC Hamlet (the one that came with its own real human skull) was the first production (of many) in recent years to come with the sort of ticket queues that required sleeping bags and a hardy, demented ability to withstand London weather in the winter. Ever since, there seems to have been a cynical goldrush, season in and season out, with a production that plays on a posh A-lister’s fans and said A-lister’s ego; the fans make sure that the theatre sells out, the ego convinces our heavyweight that this kind of kudos and prestige just can’t be bought (well, unless Netflix is paying for it). | David Tennant’s 2008 RSC Hamlet (the one that came with its own real human skull) was the first production (of many) in recent years to come with the sort of ticket queues that required sleeping bags and a hardy, demented ability to withstand London weather in the winter. Ever since, there seems to have been a cynical goldrush, season in and season out, with a production that plays on a posh A-lister’s fans and said A-lister’s ego; the fans make sure that the theatre sells out, the ego convinces our heavyweight that this kind of kudos and prestige just can’t be bought (well, unless Netflix is paying for it). |
| From memory, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Sheen, John Simm, Rory Kinnear (properly original and critically certified to be Among The Very Best), have all hit this career sweet spot on British stages. I have seen seven productions in the past decade and I haven’t even been massively trying. I don’t even rate the hammy sadboy among Shakespeare’s best characters. (For what it’s worth, my favourite was the RSC school version put on in 2010 by Moonlight’s Tarrell Alvin McCraney: a 90-minute redux in a school assembly hall of year sevens. What better way to make sure you stage a Hamlet that doesn’t bore the audience to sleep?) | From memory, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Sheen, John Simm, Rory Kinnear (properly original and critically certified to be Among The Very Best), have all hit this career sweet spot on British stages. I have seen seven productions in the past decade and I haven’t even been massively trying. I don’t even rate the hammy sadboy among Shakespeare’s best characters. (For what it’s worth, my favourite was the RSC school version put on in 2010 by Moonlight’s Tarrell Alvin McCraney: a 90-minute redux in a school assembly hall of year sevens. What better way to make sure you stage a Hamlet that doesn’t bore the audience to sleep?) |
| Still, the importance of playing theatre’s most anguished prince isn’t only massively overstated in British culture, it is boring. A bit like the idea that the peak of British cultural discourse hangs on whoever plays the next James Bond or Doctor in Doctor Who, Hamlet is a hollow bellwether: being offered the chance to play the role isn’t, as it’s borne out, always about making it to the peak of your powers as a performer operating head and shoulders above your peers. Critics and gatekeepers insist that it might be, but it doesn’t account for the very narrow casting that the major theatres have engaged in. It’s true that Maxine Peake has now had a very good go at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and that the Royal Shakespeare Company finally cast a black actor – Paapa Essiedu – in the role last year. | Still, the importance of playing theatre’s most anguished prince isn’t only massively overstated in British culture, it is boring. A bit like the idea that the peak of British cultural discourse hangs on whoever plays the next James Bond or Doctor in Doctor Who, Hamlet is a hollow bellwether: being offered the chance to play the role isn’t, as it’s borne out, always about making it to the peak of your powers as a performer operating head and shoulders above your peers. Critics and gatekeepers insist that it might be, but it doesn’t account for the very narrow casting that the major theatres have engaged in. It’s true that Maxine Peake has now had a very good go at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and that the Royal Shakespeare Company finally cast a black actor – Paapa Essiedu – in the role last year. |
| Plenty of actors of colour who have been frustrated at not getting the role they want have been forced to write their own parts in shows and plays instead. And so, of course, in this way, it makes sense that Riz Ahmed – who is at the glitziest red-carpet stage of his career yet – is using his leverage to play a part he refuses to hang around for. Why bother waiting for the National Theatre to call when Netflix is the industry’s future? | Plenty of actors of colour who have been frustrated at not getting the role they want have been forced to write their own parts in shows and plays instead. And so, of course, in this way, it makes sense that Riz Ahmed – who is at the glitziest red-carpet stage of his career yet – is using his leverage to play a part he refuses to hang around for. Why bother waiting for the National Theatre to call when Netflix is the industry’s future? |
| Theatre | Theatre |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Riz Ahmed | Riz Ahmed |
| Netflix | Netflix |
| comment | comment |
| Share on Facebook | Share on Facebook |
| Share on Twitter | Share on Twitter |
| Share via Email | Share via Email |
| Share on LinkedIn | Share on LinkedIn |
| Share on Pinterest | Share on Pinterest |
| Share on Google+ | Share on Google+ |
| Share on WhatsApp | Share on WhatsApp |
| Share on Messenger | Share on Messenger |
| Reuse this content | Reuse this content |