1935

Abstract

Wednesday 2 JanuaryOn New Year's Eve I saw Gielgud's ‘Hamlet’ at the New Theatre. (Lilian, Ida and Rosemary, in all the glory of her first long evening dress, and I taxied down to Kettners for dinner, on to the theatre – R's first Hamlet – and taxied home through streets pleasantly riotous with New Year's Eve revellers.) Gielgud, I thought, was better than when I saw his first Hamlet some four years ago, but is not wholly satisfactory. The cuts were few – a good deal of the political explanation went from Scene 1 but Fortinbras was retained and given his proper value in the last scene: there was an odd inexplicable cut in the play scene, Hamlet's renaissance mouthing of his quatrain being omitted – and the play was taken straight through with but one short interval. The Ophelia of Jessica Tandy was disappointing. She conveyed excellently the toppled brain in the mad scene, but with her slight physique and thin voice she did not convince one that Hamlet had ever had any amorous feeling for her, and there was no contrast between Ophelia sane and Ophelia mad. She used no flowers – this was no innovation, but in view of the description of her death it still seems to me that Shakespeare meant actual flowers to be borne. Hamlet followed the tradition of no portraits in the closet scene. The real weakness of Gielgud was that he never conveyed the bantering side of Hamlet's character – in the recorder speech he worked himself into a great and ranting rage, but to my mind Hamlet is quiet throughout, and his sudden turn on the two who would pluck the heart from his mystery was surely quiet – banteringly – whimsically – contemptuously. Frank Vosper as Claudius was excellent. […] The setting was a series of Tudor pictures which were so good that they distracted the mind too much. One felt that Ophelia had been cast for her part as a decoration. The lack of noticeable breaks in the action for changes of scene was achieved by the use of round elevated towers with steps – giving the stage a Craigian look. ‘Something too much of this!’ I thought several times – an apron stage would have been better. The Gielgud method robbed the quieter scenes of intimacy. But it was a good Hamlet, despite my quirks.