HAMLET

Article written by Elia Nichols

Teatro Del Carretto presents:

HAMLET

by William Shakespeare

directed by Maria Grazia Cipriani

My biggest pet peeve of the theatre is when the audience cannot hear the actors. This is one of the reasons why it is universally known that being a stage actor requires much more instruction, experience and talent than being a film actor. The stage actor’s voice and body must be well-trained and in good shape. Especially when doing Shakespeare!

In Teatro del Carretto’s production of Hamlet, the actor playing the title role (Alex Sassatelli) has clearly had no voice training at all. He spends the entire play whispering to the point that the audience cannot hear the greater part of his multitude of lines. The only actor I have ever seen who could whisper onstage and still be heard was Gabriele Lavia in one specifically chosen monologue of Macbeth. Usually, however, whispering does not equal good acting. When Mr. Sassatelli is understood, he is monotone and unfortunately uses the despicable and damaging-to-the-chords “vocal fry”– a fashionable epidemic of the Y and Z generations, that makes the speaker sound as if they’ve run out of air and are creating sound by scraping their vocal chords together. It produces an unattractive, closed, scratchy sound. But at least when Mr. Sassatelli “vocal fries,” the audience can vaguely hear him!

It is unfortunate that Shakespeare’s exquisite words are never given the power they are due in this production. Elsa Bossi, in the roles of Ophelia and Gertrude, has similar vocal problems. The only time you can hear her is in Ophelia’s madness scene, which was visually striking and had the possibility of being moving. However, because the actress screams every word so that you cannot understand one of them, the scene loses all of its power, and the audience is left listening to cacophony.

Another chief problem is that Maria Grazia Cipriani has directed Sassatelli to begin mad. In fact, most of the characters start the show in a state of madness. What does this mean? That none of the actors have anywhere to go. As an actor, if your character begins the show already crazy, then you have no journey to take, nowhere to build, grow, and change, which is what makes theatre dynamic. Therefore, in this version, the actors perform the entire show at one extremely heightened emotional state, without listening or connecting to anyone else onstage. The result is a cold, insane world with no gray, no room for subtleties or complexity.

The show, physically, is strong. The choreography is interesting. But all of the characters except for Hamlet are basically visual and physical puppets, popping in and out of the scenes, but not giving any weight or importance to their roles and throwing most of their lines away. The only function they serve is to give Hamlet something to whisper about. Compliments to the choreographer for the Alfred Hitchcock dance of death which is entertaining and certainly the most (if not only) successful scene in the play. But unfortunately, it is completely out of place and does nothing to aid the telling of the story.

Another pet peeve of mine is the unnecessary use of nudity in the theatre. This is unfortunately rampantly abused throughout Italian theatre. I am certain this comes from the “velina phenomenon” in Italian television—the idea that if you stick an almost naked extremely young woman on the screen, people will watch your wretched show. But the fact that this version of Hamlet has no nudity until the very end makes it all the more ridiculous and gratuitous. All of a sudden, a flat is raised and Ophelia’s dead and completely naked body is shown. Immediately after, Hamlet and Laertes, before their final fight to the death, find the time to rip off their shirts and stand there a while in their trousers, for who knows what reason. It’s not only unnecessary, it is also incredibly distracting.

Perhaps the gravest sin of this production is that the company does not tell the story of Hamlet: thus, to understand what is going on in Teatro Del Carretto’s version, you have to have read the play multiple times, something most audience members won’t have done and should not have to do. A friend of mine asked me during the show, “But where are they?” And I said, “Denmark, of course!” And she said, “Well how would I possibly know that? They certainly haven’t given us any help!” Yes indeed, the actors spend time onstage thinking much and muttering more, but they keep it all to themselves, never sharing it with the audience. The result is that we are not affected, neither by the actors nor the story, and in the end, we just… don’t… care. A grave sin indeed.

The only saving grace in the show is the set, beautifully designed by Graziano Gregori. It is creative, inspired, in line with the rest of the show, and incredibly functional for the actors. Yet the “curtained walls” that separate and allow for engaging entrances and exits still cannot save this blunder of a show.