Health and Safety to the rescue

 

Shakespeare plays often put challenging physical demands on actors. An actor playing King Lear, for example (who won't be in the first flush of youth, by the way), has to scale the emotional heights and plumb the depths and then at the end, in the most heart-wrenching scene of all, walk on carrying the body of his youngest daughter, Cordelia. One famous actor – I think it was Ralph Richardson – when asked the most important thing when playing Lear, replied “a light Cordelia”.

Hamlet is well known among actors for being very long and tiring then having an exciting, and very exhausting, swordfight at the end. Well,  our version is not that long. We've kept all the scenes and all the characters but we've trimmed them to fit the small scale spaces we’re playing them in so we won’t be keeping you more than two-and-a-bit hours (it’s shorter than either Titanic or Avatar but is also 3D– and cheaper). But we still have to do the swordfight. (And in our production the actor playing Hamlet isn’t in the first flush of youth either, by the way).

In keeping with the style of the production we think we've found a fun way of doing it. It doesn't involve anything sharp – that would be impossible in the Arthouse because the audience are too close for comfort, or for that matter safety. So this time health and safety has inspired us rather than held us back - to do something fun, but effective – we hope! People who’ve seen it think it works really well – come along and let us know.