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2 THE MAKING OF DISCOVERING HAMLET by Mark Olshaker I have been privileged to see a lot of great theatre over the years and around the world. And no actor I have seen on stage has been able to move me so consistently and so completely as Sir Derek Jacobi, with whom I have been fortunate enough to work on a number of PBS film productions. So when he told me over dinner one night in London in 1987 that he intended to direct for the first time, and that what he would direct was the greatest writer of all time s greatest play, I was immediately captivated. Derek explained that he had been hired by a young and dynamic, actor-managed theatre company called Renaissance, which was headed by an exciting and highly talented Anglo-Irishman named Kenneth Branagh. Branagh had already played two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including the lead in Henry V, and had had a leading role in Another Country in the Mark Olshaker West End. This would be his first professional run at Hamlet. The idea of one great Hamlet passing on the legacy to a promising star of the next generation was irresistible. Derek predicted great things for Ken, and the past two decades have certainly born out his prophecy. For me, the theatre has always been a place of magic and mystery. The magic is that a group of people sitting together in the audience can be transported into another world and another realm of experience by a group of actors standing in front of them and 1

3 pretending. The mystery is: how does this happen? This is what I wanted to explore with Derek, Ken, and their fellow actors in Discovering Hamlet: the mystery of what happens in those weeks between the first read-through and opening night. In contrast to the oft-heard claim of a film that begins where all the others leave off, I wanted to produce one that would leave off where all the others begin. In other words: how do a director and company transform words written on a page into an entire world of human experience and intrigue? Derek, Ken, his co-producer and acting colleague David Parfitt, and I met in New York while Derek was starring in the wonderful Breaking the Code on Broadway. We agreed that the camera would have free rein to go anywhere, to capture whatever happened good or bad and that members of the company would share their thoughts and feelings as the creative process unfolded. There was a tremendous leap of faith on everyone s part to allow this eavesdropping on what is by its very nature an intimate, fragile, and self-conscious process. Those of us in documentary filmmaking have our own version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the mere act of observing an event can alter that event in strange and unpredictable ways. But it was fascinating and gratifying how quickly the camera and microphone became invisible to these theatre professionals as they engrossed themselves in their work. As Derek says, Hamlet inhabits the world of imagination, the world of what would happen if, the world of finding out who you are, what you are, where you are in relation to other people in the universe. This is true of most of Shakespeare, most of drama, really. But Hamlet in particular comes very close to what acting itself is about, to how actors react to a situation, to the whole craft of pretending. In fact, nearly everyone in the play is engaged in some kind of pretense, and one of the problems each character faces is how to interpret and respond to the roles adopted by others. This theatrical hall of mirrors was what we witnessed come alive during the creative process of rehearsal, as each actor began to inhabit his or her character and discover how they each fit into the universe of the play. The creative process for us as filmmakers was to figure out how to turn more than 30 hours of video shot over a four-week period into a coherent and meaningful narrative. Actually, the key ended up being to make it two interlocking narratives. When we got into the editing room, my filmmaking partner Larry Klein, editor Sam Green, and I realised that the most efficient way to tell our story was to interweave the narrative of the play with the narrative of the rehearsal period. Thus, while focusing on the first week of rehearsal, we showed the actors working on scenes early in the play, and so on. As we get farther along in the rehearsal process, more and more of Hamlet s story is revealed, or discovered. By the time a tense and expectant Ken Branagh walks from the dressing room to the stage on opening night to take up his part in the greatest of all acting traditions, viewers will both know the play and have an appreciation of what went into bringing it to life. Discovering Hamlet is now more than 20 years old. We are highly gratified by the impact it has had, and continues to have, both in schools and with the general public, as well as the inspiration it has provided young actors and those considering careers in the creative arts. A lot has changed over those decades, but one thing has remained constant: the greatest creative artist the world has ever known continues to inspire new interpretations and release new meaning every time we approach 2 3

4 him. It has been true for the last 400 years, and will continue so as long as civilisation endures. THE RENAISSANCE THEATRE COMPANY In 1985, Kenneth Branagh had an idea that he hoped would reinvigorate a lost tradition of the British theatre. I wanted to form a company which tapped the imagination and energy of the actors involved, a company which placed the actors in a central position, he later wrote in his autobiography. Like the King s Men of Shakespeare s day, it would encourage actors to write if they wanted to. It would give veteran actors the opportunity to direct young talent in great roles. Most of all, it would make both contemporary plays and classics accessible to wider audiences. The idea gestated for two years. By 1987, Branagh had found an administrative partner, fellow actor David Parfitt. (He portrays Rosencrantz in Discovering Hamlet and later produced Shakespeare in Love.) Branagh also hit upon a name: the Renaissance Theatre Company. Besides investing money from his own blossoming TV and film career, he secured modest funding from private donors, including a host of writers and actors. Prince Charles legitimised the operation by agreeing to be a patron of the company. Renaissance launched its first season in 1987 with Public Enemy, a political melodrama set in Belfast, written by Branagh and directed by Malcolm McKay. John Sessions s one-man show The Life of Napoleon followed, along with Twelfth Night, directed by Branagh. In 1988, Renaissance produced three Shakespeare plays with leading lights of the British stage making their directorial debuts: Much Ado About Nothing (Judi Dench), As You Like It (Geraldine McEwan), and Hamlet (Derek Jacobi). These early successes led to expansion beyond the stage, including BBC Radio broadcasts of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear and a televised production of Look Back in Anger, directed by Judi Dench. Renaissance disbanded in 1994, as film projects made increasing demands on Branagh s and Parfitt s time. But they had proved that an actorled, actor-directed, and actor-managed company could succeed, both artistically and commercially. HOW IT PLAYED Critical response to the RTC s Hamlet Looking back on his turn as the Prince of Denmark under Derek Jacobi s direction, Kenneth Branagh was his own harshest critic. I produced a hectic Hamlet, high on energy but low on subtlety and crucially lacking depth, he wrote almost 10 years later. I was aware that something Jacobi himself had brought effortlessly and effectively to the role was life experience... A longer exposure to the whips and scorns of time in his own life gave him an easy weight which underlined the depths of Hamlet s thinking. Despite his own misgivings, audiences and reviewers lauded the youthful Branagh s performance indeed, the whole production. The show played to sold-out crowds during its initial run and later on tour. Irving Wardle of the Times (U.K.) raved about its high-pressure 4 5

5 theatricality and the troupe s devotion to textual clarity and the art of storytelling. Wardle went on, It also registers a hair-raisingly direct response to the play. The Independent (U.K.) concurred. The cast looked radiantly happy as they took their first-night curtain calls, and well they might, for they have done something rather extraordinary," wrote reviewer Michael Church. They have turned straight Shakespeare into popular entertainment. In the Financial Times (U.K.), Michael Coveney singled out Branagh s performance, calling it a Hamlet of unusual power and individuality, no whit a moping poet or a weeping mother-fixated neurotic. He concluded, The intriguing interpretation is fresh, original, and compulsively memorable. The rest of the cast earned high praise from Times theatre critic Harry Eyres, who highlighted Richard Easton s Claudius ( wolfishly grinning ) and Dearbhla Molloy s Gertrude ( a consort of patent sexual allure ). And, as Ophelia, Sophie Thompson demonstrated that her sister Emma was not the only formidable acting talent in the family. Eyres called her startlingly intense episodes of madness the dramatic high points of the production. How Many Hamlets? Any production faces a key question: which version to use? When narrator Patrick Stewart says that the challenges of staging Hamlet begin with the text, he s not kidding. No single definitive edition of the play exists. In fact, Hamlet comes down to us in three radically different versions, all dating from the early 1600s. Whenever you read the play or see it staged, you re actually experiencing a composite text essentially, a stew of words selected from different sources, based on the production team s best guess about Shakespeare s intentions. The earliest, shortest, and most dubious Hamlet dates from 1603 and runs a little over 2,000 lines. Despite Shakespeare s name on the title page, some scholars believe that actors reconstructed it from memory, or that it was an early draft of the playwright s. Formally called the First Quarto (after its printing format), it s also widely known as the bad quarto, and not just because it has some inelegant, oddly worded passages. For instance, it puts the To be or not to be soliloquy and nunnery 6 7

6 scene not long after Hamlet s encounter with the ghost, rather than in the third act after the players arrive. In addition, the characters that we know as Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern appear as Corambis, Rossencraft, and Gilderstone. Nearly all modern editions of Hamlet rely on two later, longer versions. Published in 1604 or 1605 (different extant copies bear different dates), the Second Quarto clocks in at nearly twice the length of the First Quarto and slightly longer than the third version, known as the First Folio. Printed in a large, expensive format in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare died, the First Folio contains Hamlet and 35 of the Bard s other plays. While the First Quarto presents a rather bare-bones revenge tragedy, the Second Quarto and First Folio develop Hamlet s character more fully, though in subtly different ways. In all, the Second Quarto contains roughly 230 lines not found in the later First Folio, including a fourth soliloquy for Hamlet (in Act IV, Scene 4). On the other hand, the Folio contains about 80 lines not found in the Second Quarto. Finally, there are hundreds of different word choices scattered throughout both versions. Some are obvious typos, but many appear deliberate and affect the meaning of the line not to mention our sense of the character who speaks it. For the production documented in Discovering Hamlet, the Renaissance Theatre Company chose the Arden edition (second series), based primarily on the Second Quarto. Eventually, Kenneth Branagh became intrigued by Hamlet s textual issues and resolved to present what he called a full text version. He based the script for his 1996 film on the uncut Folio, while adding large chunks from the Second Quarto the Act IV soliloquy, for instance. He also included often-deleted dialogue, such as the exchange between Polonius and Reynaldo that appears at the beginning of Act II in both the Second Quarto and the Folio, to add richness and depth to the supporting roles. Furthermore, Branagh spoke 8 lines never before uttered by any Hamlet, reciting his love poem to Ophelia in flashback (lines usually delivered by Polonius, reading from Hamlet s letter in Act II). The film ran just over 4 hours, making it the longest commercial movie since Cleopatra in Besides earning Branagh an Oscar nomination for best screenplay, it also reunited him with Renaissance alums Derek Jacobi (Claudius) and Russell Jackson (text consultant) in a sense, bringing the actor s discovery of Hamlet back to where it began. HAMLET S ADVICE TO ACTORS Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue, but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness... Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as twere, the mirror up to nature. Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2 Booklet written and edited by Joseph D. Younger, Elizabeth Stocum, and Jennifer Coggins Acorn Media Group Inc. Photo of Mark Olshaker by Philip Bermingham. 9