Review: DADA MASILO’S HAMLET at Sadler’s Wells

The piece opens with a lone performer, downstage centre as Hamlet (Aphiwe Dike) delivering the famous “To be or not to be…” soliloquy, which is usually reached at the mid-point of any ordinary telling of Hamlet. He does so at a nervous pace, with seemingly little understanding of the context or sense of what he is conveying, nor does he demonstrate the remotest clue about where to place emphasis (or indeed, his hands), which perhaps could have benefited from a director's engagement and guidance. Not the most encouraging of starts, to be fair.

Then we're off at a gallop with company members delivering choreography that could best be described as a mash-up of Kenneth MacMillan's 1965 Romeo and Juliet interspersed with Jerome Robbins' flamenco skirt flicks from West Side Story's America. Meanwhile, the backdrop projection confirms that we are most definitely at Kronborg Castle in Helsingør (aka Elsinore) so what we should be seeing, is something relating to Hamlet rather than the play set in Verona (or its modern musical version set at Upper West Side Manhattan). I don't know, perhaps for some creatives, one Shakespeare play is much like another and therefore interchangeable?

Anyway, on we go. Hamlet's mother Queen Gertrude (played by Llewellyn Mnguni - who is responsible for this re-staging and is also credited as Assistant Choreographer and exemplifies the gender fluidity present in the troupe's ethos and indeed, much of Shakespeare's canon) is distraught on receipt of bad news. Gertrude happens to be attired in one of those Cosman dresses which absolutely require the wearer to spin around a lot to make the most of the glistening gold fabric. This she does whilst fretting over the letter which informs her of the death of her husband the king. Before long however, she is making merry with his dastardly brother Claudius, much to her son's chagrin. He rebukes and attempts to throttle hapless Mother Gertie, and then takes out his unassuaged fury on poor unsuspecting Ophelia (Lehlohonolo Madise) who is dreadfully manhandled and gets shouted at (“Get thee to a nunnery" etc). This presumably then, is the radical feminist re-telling of Shakespeare's Hamlet told through the eyes of Gertrude and Ophelia, which we were promised. I don't mind telling you, that as a man, I felt short-changed. Goodness only knows what most feminists in the audience were feeling by this time.

Rather than being about the constraints and injustice of patriarchal misogyny suffered by the key female characters in the play, in this production we were treated to a tiresomely extended interlude during which the chap playing dastardly Claudius (Thando Mgobhozi as the new king who not only usurped his own brother, but is now bedding his widow) suffers an overwhelming attack of remorse and grovels about on the floor of the Sadler's Wells main stage whilst praying to excess in front of a projection of a leaded church window. It took-up so much time, that I began to speculate that it was a device to cover a dramatic theatrical set change, but alack and alas! Thereafter, Hamlet despatched a leap-frogging Tweedle-Dum Tweedle-Dee pair, one of whom he addressed as Rosie (so presumably Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, although it was far from clear), and then engaged in a few stag leaps and pike jumps to suggest a sword fight.

This proved a mere appetiser before the poisoned main course denouement, during which matters fully descended into a chaotic free-for-all in which there was more spinning around, clutching of stomachs, rolling about and the sort of “dying” one expects to see at a first year students' acting class. In all honesty, I found the 1 hour spectacle woeful and a huge disappointment. If however, after reading this review you still believe what I've described could be right up your street, there is a second performance on Tuesday 26th May. Good luck, or Held ogg lykke, (as Hamlet would undoubtedly have uttered in Danish).