Hamlet Productions

Olivier Genre

Film Noir - 1948

Zeffirelli Genre

Action Adventure - 1990

Branagh Genre

Epic - 1996

Screen - Fortinbras doesn’t appear

• Olivier (1948)

• Zeffirelli (1990)

Screen - Fortinbras super influential

• Kozintev (1964)

• Branagh (1996)

Freudian sentiments

Include

• Olivier (1948)

• Zeffirelli (1990)

Avoids

• Kozintsev (1964)

• Branagh (1996)

Young Vic Production 2011

• Set in a mental asylum.

• Reinforces the idea that H is genuinely mad (antic disposition not a thing)

• Sheen’s Hamlet idealises the dead father by becoming the Ghost himself (similarity with RSC 2025 production)

• reduces other characters to elements in his dreams i.e. Claudius simply becomes the detested authority figure

• Makes the play Hamlet-centric → similar to late 19th century productions that focused almost exclusively on the melancholy Dane

• lose the political ideas and the sense that Hamlet is just one part of this turbulent court

Almereyda’s Hamlet film 2000

• Claudius is "king" of the Denmark Corporation, having taken over the firm by killing his brother, Hamlet's father.

• Bill Murray plays Polonius as more of a bumbling idiot, less of a calculated villain.

• Hamlet is a film student

• Begins with Hamlet watching videos of Claudius’ speeches -→ importance of Claudius’s oratory skills and Hamlet’s madness and fixation

• H starts out as a self-pitying counter-cultural malcontent, a woolly hat pulled down over his ears, his reflection constantly seen in the gleaming mirror surfaces of the city.

• Fortinbras is a looming presence, the tougher young business tycoon who, in headlines in USA Today, is seen making takeover bids for the Denmark Corporation.

• emphasises the political

Holmes’ production - stage 2022 at the Globe

• Claudius wasn’t very villainous or emotional

• Polonius was commanding and richly dressed, not the trad, interp. of a bumbling old fool

• Horatio played by 70 yr old man → the two were v. close / sense of mentorship which emphasised the tragedy

• Candlight (like o.g. Globe) and handheld flood lights

• Playground chants used for Ophelia’s mad scenes

• Claudius deeply loves Gertrude and acts out of love

Haidar’s 'Hamlet' 2022

• Production opens with Hamlet alone on stage playing and replaying a tape recording of Claudius' first speech. → keeps replaying the phrase 'our sometime sister, now our queen'

• In the background of the set, a home video is playing showing a young Hamlet playing with his mother

• Horatio is played by a female actress. Changes outlook of Hamlet as a misogynist (the way he treats Ophelia and Gertrude) if his closest confidante is a woman.

• Hamlet’s 'To be or not to be' is controlled and calm, much more so than his previous soliloquy about suicide ('O that this too solid flesh would melt') → antic disposition is simply that, not truly mad

• NO FORTINBRAS

Duke’s Production Stage 2023

• Hamlet's madness was played as childish and almost schoolboy-like, mocking other people in a childlike voice and being overly effeminate for the gag.

Turner’s Production (2015) (Benedict Cumberbatch)

• Hamlet plays with toy soldiers

• He starts the show in his room, flipping through a family album and listening to the gramophone

• The Ghost's first appearances on the battlements are not visible

• Cumberbatch adopts a "antic disposition," first wearing a Native American headdress and then parading around in the scarlet tunic and peaked helmet of a 19th-century infantryman.

• The palatial set is filled with mounds of trash and overturned chairs in the second half to depict Claudius' collapsing tyranny.

• Jim Norton makes Polonius an anxious fusspot who even reads out his carefully prepared advice to Laertes

Godwin’s Production (Paapa Essiedu) (2016)

• Old Hamlet also doubled as a grave digger (both 'under the stage').

• After falling into madness, Hamlet dons a paint-splattered suit and begins graffitiing on the walls.

• Hamlet "definitely has an issue with his mother's sexuality," and his difficulties accepting his mother's sexuality are "borderline obsessive." (Oedipus complex)

• Hamlet spray paints and defaces the portrait of Gertrude and Claudius

• Hamlet is shown at Wittenberg uni at the start of the film and is happy there

• Claudius dressed in military attire (ordered)- presenting a different Elsenore to Big H's traditional. Difference in character.

• Use of tribal drums to connote the presence of the Ghost - link to the ceremony of death (a play entrenched in ceremony, custom and tradition)

• Hamlet as an artist was very different to him as an intellectual/philosopher. Interested in how art would allow him to express himself.

• has very deep relationships w people around him- dad, Ophelia. Has great capacity for humanity.

• Claudius and Gertrude wear matching shades of red (united force)

• Graphic drawn image of skeleton wearing crown behind C and G's thrones

• Ghost is dressed in tribal clothes - importance of tradition

  

Laurence Olivier (1948)

• Took out the sinister scene where Polonius asks Reynaldo to spy on Laertes

• Closet Scene O.G.

• Gertrude’s actor was 29 and Olivier was 40

• We do not see the ghost in the closet scene, only hear - builds on the interpretation that Hamlet is going mad

Richard Burton (1964)

• Cronyn portrayed Polonius as a primarily comic role

Branagh 1996

• Hamlet’s platinum blonde hair makes him look like Claudius - drawing parallels between the tragic hero and the villain, suggesting there is less of a distinction between the two as the play progresses.

• Hamlet is shown actually killing Claudius in the confession box as an imaginary murder. This makes the audience acknowledge how quick the revenge could have been carried out, however due to Hamlets indecisiveness but didn’t

• Ends with soldiers dismantling old Hamlet's statue, signifying that one tyranny based on individual power will be replaced by another and nothing really changes.

• Black and white courtroom (objectivity vs. game of chess)

• Get thee to a nunnery scene takes place in a confessional (truth)

• Ophelia in strait jacket for madness

• Uses flashbacks of Yorick and Hamlet when Hamlet was a child to show Hamlet's youthful past - change from present

  

Zadek’s 2000 production (female Hamlet - Angela Winkler)

• Winkler brings out - in a way that no other man has - Hamlet's enormous capacity for love, a capacity that is constantly befuddled and frustrated.

• Her love for Ophelia is clear - during the Play scene, they sit together endlessly fondling and stroking each other.

• Even Hamlet's disdain for Gertrude is mitigated by Winkler's affection

• in the closet scene, she nuzzles her mother's breast, as if seeking reassurance and warmth.

• during the duel, she offers her hand to Laertes with courtly grace, only to be cruelly rebuffed.

• She gives us hints of Hamlet's ferocity, not least in her feral snarls, and of his manic-depressive moods

• on "the play's the thing" Winkler leaps in the air as if she has cracked an insolvable problem

Doran (2009)- David Tennant

• The play moves in a quite different direction → focus on retrospection and the past

• Opening Scene → his agreement not to return to university fixes him in the role of a child

• The first thing heard is the sound of hammering and drilling as Denmark's night-working Niebelungen prepare the country for war.

• Court scene 1.2 camera shows Hamlet in a seperate shot, isolated

• the first half ends with Tennant poised with a dagger over the praying Claudius, crying

• The lean, dark-suited figure of the opening scene dissolves into grief the moment he is alone

• instead of rattling off "O that this too sullied flesh would melt," Tennant gives the impression that the words must be wrung from his prostrate frame.

• Nunnery scene - Hamlet catches a glimpse of a security camera before switching to his antic disposition whereas before he appeared genuinely stressed

• Modern version does the change of heart in the prayer scene as a voice over allows Hamlet to get closer

• Stewart's Claudius is a supremely composed, calculating killer - at the end of the play scene he strides over to Hamlet and pitingly shakes his head alluding to the danger of what comes next

• Ophelia rips off Claudius’ clothes in madness

• takes of her own clothes

• Laertes enters with a gun and Gertrude physically holds him back

Sarah Siddons (1775)

• First female Hamlet.

• Also played Ophelia

• Hazlitt called her “tragedy personified” (year)

Hersov (2021)

• Jumbo's Hamlet is not so much a hand-wringing antihero as a clear-eyed son, indignant with righteous rage for his murdered father.

• Claudius dressed like real estate agent and Gertrude wearing YSL bags and turbans → sense they were brought together by pragmatism not passion

• Polonius’ family relationship contrasts that of the self-obsessed royal family

• No Fortinbras

• Funny Gravedigger scene

• Even in his soliloquies, Hamlet makes it all about him - self-absorbed

• female actor but plays Hamlet as a man

• She brings teenage energy to Hamlet's strops, intelligent wit to his feigned madness and shows a shining clarity in the soliloquies, which are delivered with grand, pure power.

• She sobs as she speaks of her dead father and runs into her mother's arms, suddenly childlike, with none of the incestuous undertones we often see between Hamlet and Gertrude.

• Norah Lopez Holden is magnificent as Ophelia, wrenching emotional depth from a thin, flat role. She has a sweet innocence that never seems contrived and we feel her teenage flutterings at Hamlet's slights as well as her depth of grief for Polonius.

• There are no sceptres or crowns in this court

• both Adrian Dunbar's Claudius and Tara Fitzgerald's Gertrude seem undercooked. Perhaps it is deliberate, to emphasise the banality of evil

Icke (2022)

• Alex Lawther's fragile Danish prince drags himself onstage

• modern-dress production

• Hamlet's shuffles like a wayward toddler, with knees slightly bent and a constant sway that makes him appear near collapse.

• Planning to enact his vengeance on his scheming uncle, he holds a gun off at an angle, as though his arm is being pupeted by someone else pulling the strings above the stage.

Icke (2017)

• Almeida Theatre adaptation and filmed almost like a stage play

• video news inserts of breaking news such as the old king dying.

• for the most part, soft-spoken#

• flashes of genuine rage as when, observing his mother cuddling up to Claudius, he roars

• Scott's Hamlet is most memorable for his charm, self-mockery and ability to speak directly to the audience.

• Surveillance is, in fact, a key part of this world. Polonius is constantly wired up so that he can report the latest news of Hamlet's mental state

• hand-held cameras track Elsinore's leaders on all public occasions. No one is ever quite alone in this corrupt kingdom.

• He simulates sex with Gertrude on lines, 'But to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stewed in corruption... and making love over the nasty sky'

Bennett 1980

• Opens low exposition - exacerbates the tension

• "who's there" - physically unable to see the faces of both men

• Lots of smoke - physically obscuring - sense of the supernatural

• Green glowing soldier - physical depiction

• Ominous music

• 4.2 - Hamlet on the floor talking to himself before R&G arrival

• R&G don’t care for Hamlet

• Hamlet sits on Claudius desk (disrespect of royalty) - 4.3

Kisson (2016)

• Polonius as a priest

• Ophelia appears to be praying in nunnery scene (put on)

• Hamlet sharpening dagger in opening - Ophelia is already there and he does not see her

  • Makes his rumination much more severe and intense

• Here Hamlet's soliloquy is more ruminating and reflective

• Hamlet's tone is more playful "Nymph" - sing song

• Hamlet's conversation seems more aware of his own shortcomings and a desire to protect Ophelia - disregard for the actions of mankind

• Sees someone when they almost kiss - change in attitude - realisation that he has been fooled

• Rubs her face again, as if to wipe the make up off - corruption of the act

• Claudius "how shall this bloody deed by answered" seems to be seriously seeking Gertrude's advice

• Before being sent to England Hamlet appears in ripped up clothing, contrast to rest of the court

• Cut appearance of Fortinbras and Captain so that Hamlet’s decision to act is a direct consequence of being sent to England

• Ophelia madness - Laertes holds knife in one hand, and Ophelia’s tossed wig in the other - his two motives driving him