2 STARS, August 16-26. Showing at the Assembly Rooms on George St, Horatio's Tale retells Hamlet from the perspective of his best friend, Horatio
Hamlet being my favourite Shakespeare play I hotfooted it along to the beautiful Assembly Rooms, intrigued to hear of an intriguing new proposition, the play as glimpsed through the perspective of Hamlet’s best buddy Horatio. Yes, a one man, or in this case, one woman show directed by Nick Hennegan with the added bonus of Sir Derek Jacobi’s voice appearing as the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
Kizzy Dunn has the unenviable task of trying to portray all the glory of the Dane and every other character too and despite her best efforts the show simply doesn’t engage as it should, feeling static where it should be mercurial, strained rather than inspired. Much of this is simply because it’s well nigh impossible dramatically to encompass all the action of the play in this fashion.
Dunn has to effectively fight and converse with herself in every scene and the only way she can easily differentiate characters is to introduce a range of dubious accents; hence the villainous king Claudius has the remnant of a John Wayne twang, Laertes and Polonius are Northern, Ophelia not. It’s all rather disconcerting and confusing and one realizes that actually Horatio appears little in the play, he is effectively Hamlet’s sounding-board but isn’t present enough to be an effective filter for the scope of the play’s action.
Notwithstanding all this, Dunn is definitely talented though, her best moment arrives when presenting the intense climatic scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, this of the famous “get thee to a nunnery” speech. In one swift gesture as the angry Hamlet she rends her shirt in frustration and then whirls around to portray Ophelia’s tearful, dishevelled anguish. Given just one part she’d probably be very persuasive but the production as it presently stands needs a radical overhaul.
Tickets: assemblyfestival.com
- Check out Theatre/Arts Section for more great local artistic news, reviews and interviews
- You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on all our latest articles
- Sign up to our Weekly Newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and stories
- Looking to advertise your business in Surrey or SW London? Check out our 11 different lifestyle magazines with a combined monthly distribution of over 210,000 AB1 homes
