Natasha Herbert and Mark Wilson in Anti-Hamlet. Photograph by Sarah Walker.
Anti-Hamlet opens with the Prince coming on to tell us he’s in rehearsal for his one man show. All the familiar tropes of indie theatre are brought on stage to be shredded with very funny results. Should we make art instead of engaging with activism? Should we fight to make the world better? Is it all hopeless? What do we do with ourselves, anyway? Mark Wilson’s Anti-Hamlet the play has his protagonist torturing himself with these sorts of questions and meeting with Freud for advice.
Denmark/Australia is about to become a republic and the new wannabe President (Marco Chiappi doing a Bob Hawke – or is it Turnbull? since nothing seems to be going right for him) needs a referendum on something, off-shore processing of asylum seekers, say. Gertrude (Natasha Herbert) is worried about her son but not quite enough to reassess her own values, or think twice about her relationship with Claudius. Freud (Brian Lipson sailing with a headwind behind him in the role) has the expected theory as to what might be ailing Hamlet – seeing how far Wilson pushes this element of the story is one of the absolute treats of the play. Everyone is coming to Freud for advice. Horatio/Anti-Hamlet, an artist played by Marcus McKenzie, trades his muse for a nihilist fire in the belly anti-establishmentarianism, and leads Hamlet towards planning to commit the unthinkable. Ophelia (Natascha Flowers) is an overachieving Rhodes scholar who compromises to meet the demands of politics. But the compromise might be more than she can manage. Everyone is terrific in this densely worded, bitterly satirical and scabrously funny piece, but in many ways the show belongs to Charles Purcell as Edward Bernays, the Arch Manipulator who controls business and thus everyone. Watching this character relish his power is another of this show’s delight.
The play is outrageous – another treat these days when we’ve seen everything. It has moments of self-consciousness where it acknowledges the audience, letting us in on Melbourne theatre jokes, with references to the arts scene here and in Australia overall. Anti-Hamlet engages heavily with language, exposing the use of the rhetoric, the dialects of economic rationalism, of politico-speak, to highlight a world of immorality where you really can’t win, and poking fun at things we’ve all said. There are elements of Brave New World here, there are many ‘true’ Shakespearian moments, of course, including a fleeting Richard III cameo, and Freud referencing Polonius behind the curtain, along with a whole lot of witty fun. It’s tightly directed by the writer and Hamlet himself, Wilson – going against received theatrical wisdom, and (almost completely) pulling it off.
The second half is different in tone from the first, deliberately so, but is longer than needed without quite matching the energy of the first half (despite a big surprise). All the questions the play raises – many to do with everyone’s relationship to country – are seemingly unanswerable. The cynicism doesn’t let anyone off the hook, perhaps with the exception of Dr Freud. But Anti-Hamlet is a triumph nevertheless and so worth seeing, the third in Wilson’s set of Shakespearean satires commenting on contemporary culture.
Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5
Anti-Hamlet
By Mark Wilson and New Working Group
Creator / Director: Mark Wilson
Featuring: Mark Wilson, Brian Lipson, Natasha Herbert, Natascha Flowers, Marcus McKenzie, Charles Purcell, Marco Chiappi
Set and Costume Design: Romanie Harper
Lighting Design: Amelia Lever-Davidson, Matthew Adey (House of VnHoly)
Sound Design: Tom Backhaus Dramaturg /
Producer: Mark Pritchard
Associate Artist: Olivia Monticciolo
Date: 03 Nov 2016 – 13 Nov 2016
Theatre Works St Kilda
