“The Rest is Silence”: The 1980 BBC Hamlet reviewed

November 9, 2018

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This Hamlet was the last staging to be produced by Cedric Messina and represents a very deliberate break from the “filmic” vision promoted in that era. And not a moment too soon. Too late in the day it was realised that these productions worked far far better when the television audience was encouraged to imagine themselves in a theatre rather than in a cinema.

Initially, a far more cinematic and “realistic” staging was intended but (praise be), these plans were radically changed. Instead we have a very spare and geometric design for the play – with battlements and beaches suggested with the simplest of studio effects. It’s a world of fairly basic shapes painted dark grey and black. The most colourful moment concerns the rather delightful trompe-l’œil theatrical set for the play within the play, a set that plays teasing games with perspective. Derek Jacobi has great fun with it – especially as he will never leave the actors to perform the play on their own and keeps inserting himself into the action.

This theatricality proves the redemption not only of this production but of the entire 1978-1985 series. The Cedric Messina era, considered as a whole, represents a disappointing wrong turn. Rodney Bennett’s Hamlet, on the other hand, inspires confidence throughout.

Famously, Laurence Olivier, when casting his film version of Hamlet chose a Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) who was younger than he was. Of course, Olivier was heavily indebted to noted Freudian Ernest Jones for advice and oh how it shows. This 1980 version oddly enough casts Patrick Stewart as Claudius – uncle to Derek Jacobi despite the fact that Patrick Stewart was (and is) about two years younger than Derek Jacobi. Patrick Stewart manages to smile and smile and be a villain to great effect. The smile he employs when he’s making any kind of ceremonial address is truly odious. You would call it a Nixonian rictus except that it’s toothless. In the latter half of the play, when Claudius’s villainy is being plotted in real time, we start to develop a real interest in the character. Thanks to Patrick Stewart, Claudius starts to look a bit like Macbeth.

The comparison between Hamlet Senior to Claudius is meant to be a transition from Hyperion to a satyr but in this production at least, it becomes easy to credit the idea that Patrick Stewart is Patrick Allen’s younger brother.

Patrick Allen, of course, is the voice of the End of the World. If the 1980s had plunged into full scale thermonuclear war (as many of us thought it might), then Patrick Allen’s would have been the last voice most people in Britain would have ever heard. Mr “Protect and Survive” stalks the stage in very shiny armour and when he purrs “remember”, I feel the need to cower in a basement (which I don’t have) in an inner sanctum improvised out of layers of tinned food.

Eric Porter offers a comparatively dignified Polonius. He is prone to finger wagging, and it’s a particular finger that he chooses to wag, to the point where the finger becomes appropriately distracting. The genius of the role is that nothing that Polonius actually says is particularly stupid. None of the advice that he gives to Laertes is bad. It’s just the way he says it – the sing song quality of his delivery. Polonius is like a motivational poster – a creepy juxtaposition of abstractions you’d otherwise endorse but feel compelled to piss on. And yet, you can see why his daughter would grieve for him. You can see why his immediate flesh and blood would forgive him his mannerisms and take his truisms at face value.

Ophelia is Lalla Ward, most renowned as Romana Mark II who famously married Tom Baker (very briefly) before illustrating books for her subsequent partner Richard Dawkins. She was always very cool and commanding as a Time-Lord and something of this gravitas is communicated in her performance here making it a little harder to credit her descent into madness. You find yourself wondering if her herb and flower bestowing performance of doolallyness is any more authentic than Hamlet’s. It is easy to see Lalla Ward though in your mind’s eye while Gertrude is describing her watery suicide. Indeed, her elegance while onstage is only fully rewarded once she is being described offstage.

Claire Bloom of course is very lovely. She is precisely the sort of player who could best illustrate a chapter by Ernest Jones on Shakespeare. Gertrude is the most famous milf in literary history of course, but the bedroom scene as stage here is truly shocking. She is the victim of an authentic sexual assault and is left in a state of uncomprehending shock and horror. Hamlet is not her story and we get no hint of how and why she transferred her affections so quickly. Hamlet’s joke about the funeral dinner serving as a cold buffet at the wedding goes unanswered.

There’s a certain I Claudius reunion vibe going on as Derek Jacobi (Hamlet/Claudius) shares a stage with Patrick Stewart (Claudius/Sejanus) and David Robb (Laertes/Germanicus).

Emrys James is a very kindly looking First Player. He would go on to play an exquisitely moving Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra.

Delivering the final lines we meet Ian Charleson’s Fortinbras, a remarkable actor who would be used later in the series as Octavian/Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra and as the unlovable Bertram in All’s Well that End’s Well. His cold blooded resolution provides the perfect contrast to Jacobi’s Hamlet and there is something rather elegant (with hindsight) in seeing Hamlet “succeeded” as ruler by a man who went on to be the outstanding stage Hamlet of his generation.

This production of course stands or falls with Derek Jacobi. He’s an older Hamlet of course and was in his early forties when this was filmed. Considering this, the athleticism of the final fight scene is really rather breathtaking. The sheer range of mood swings demanded of the role is exhausting for any actor in the role but one aspect of Jacobi’s performance that definitely stands out is his comic timing. Hamlet is, of course, a hilarious play containing far more funny lines than most Shakespeare comedies. Jacobi is expert and bits and pieces of business that accentuate the playful nature of his hero. I especially liked the way he turned the book the right way up that Ophelia is pretending to read. He’s also good at exploiting the interchangeability of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The truth is that if you have Derek Jacobi, appropriately lit, given all the time he needs to play Hamlet, then you have all you really need for a magnificent production of the play. The rest is silence. Jacobi was recognised, certainly by 1980, as the possessor of the most lovely Shakespearean voice since John Gielgud’s debut more than half a century earlier. His delivery is often slow and careful but never seems self-indulgent. Above all, he’s not afraid of sounding pretentious and he does not gabble or garble famous lines (and the entire part consists of famous lines when you think of it), just to prove that he’s “acting” rather than reciting. Jacobi loves poetry. And he knows how it works. Jacobi’s Hamlet, quite rightly, is never mad – incidentally. He reaches states of high emotional intensity but he never “loses it”. There is always method in’t. He is dressed in Renaissance costume but he has a surprisingly modern way of wearing it. He would not look out of place in many rock bands c. 1980. There is also the Jacobi giggle – an astonishing musical device which is used strategically to disrupt expectations of significance.

If the music reminds you of an unusually memorable and scary 1970s Doctor Who adventure then yes you’re quite right it’s by Dudley Simpson.

Rodney Bennett, incidentally, directed three classic Doctor Who adventures in the 1970s – Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, and Masque of Mandragora. All three of these stories was scored by Dudley Simpson. So what you are watching in this 1980s production is a kind of apotheosis of 1970s televisual talent. We shall not see their like again, because television does not work in the same way any more and is geared towards meeting different audiences with different expectations.

I have some reflections on other 1978-1985 BBC Shakespeare productions.

Two Gentlemen of Verona