The
blades, the handsome handiwork of Weta Workshops who armed everyone
in The Lord of the Rings movies, are safely blunt. But they are
capable of crushing the skull of any bystander who gets in the
way.
Little
wonder then that the older of the two combatants implores the
rest of the 16 on stage to "be aware of the danger, be more
aware than with anything you have ever done before".
Barely
two weeks out from opening night--when these weapons will be wielded
fiercely and fast--director Michael Hurst is tackling the climactic
final scene of the great Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet, in which
he will play the lead role.
He's
in his element: a former provincial fencing champion and exponent
of karate, he's an expert in stage combat who is often hired to
train actors to fight. But the swordfight with Laertes (Kip Chapman)
with which he has started his day through the entire rehearsal
period, is just part of the scene's exacting choreography. Hurst
is also working out how to move the entire cast around and retain
the dramatic momentum as the play remorselessly doubles its body
count to eight.
Hurst,
unquestionably our finest and most versatile male actor, has established
himself as one of our most adventurous and exciting directors
of Shakespeare. And to watch him at work is to see instinct and
intellect combine in a way which makes effort seem effortless.
He may look like one who's making it up as he goes along--in a
sense he is--but his invention is underpinned by a sure sense
of stagecraft and driven by a love for the grandly theatrical.
It's
a hunger for that theatricality which has persuaded him to take
on, for the second time, one of the theatre's titanic roles. Hamlet
is the first production of the newly formed Large Group, a partnership
between Hurst and associate director Christian Penny. Penny, who
teaches at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School in Wellington,
worked with Anna Marbrook under the banner Theatre at Large in
the early 1990s, staging dazzlingly inventive pieces like The
Butcher's Wife and Henry 8. The pair had long wanted to work together
and Hurst, whose last Shakespearean role was in another self-directed
Hamlet almost exactly nine years ago, saw the tragedy as the ideal
launching pad for an ensemble company which is intended to become
part of the Queen City's theatrical landscape. The Large Group,
as its name implies, will stage two productions next year and
three annually from 2005, concentrating on "big" work--Shakespeare,
the Greeks and Brecht are the names Hurst mentions.
Hurst
concedes that what he calls "epic" theatre is hard to
mount in these budget-sensitive times.
"But
I have this theory that if we don't let ourselves do these kinds
of plays that pull that much out of us, we're missing out on something,"
he says. "We need to see theatre that will make us weep and
be purged. We don't see it enough. It's a health issue.
"How
many plays do you go and see where you say, 'That was a great
script; I could have watched it on TV.' This stuff, the bigger
epics, they are ritualistic, almost religious ... we don't have
any of that. We have funerals, a wedding maybe. We have vestiges
of it. But we need these stories told and the theatre is the only
place for it.
"I've
always said that what theatre can offer that television and the
movies can't is the experience of the actor going through it at
the same moment as everyone else, that wonderful sense of risk."
Hurst
has come a long way since he last rehearsed the duel--his opponent
in 1994 was Penny as it happens. At that stage he had just begun
playing the hero's sidekick Iolaus in the American TV show Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys. That gig led to guest appearances on the
sister series Xena: Warrior Princess, to his first experiences
behind the camera (he directed a dozen episodes) and to a faintly
disquieting level of devotion from fans of the cult TV shows (card-carrying,
global-travelling members of the Michael Hurst fan club will be
prominent in the audience on Hamlet's opening night, you may be
sure). Between times he has directed a feature film (Jubilee)
and the TV show Love Mussel (the last appearance of his good friend
Kevin Smith).
All
this has meant he is no longer a struggling, impecunious actor
and he's still in demand for lucrative work which is less than
classical; he's arrived at today's rehearsals direct from voicing
characters from the hit TV series Power Rangers, including an
evil butterfly and a post box that licks people to death. But,
paradoxically, the progress of his career drove him back to his
roots. He's appeared in four stage shows in the last year including
the well-regarded Auckland Theatre Company production of Waiting
For Godot and the same company's sensationally successful Rocky
Horror Show. All that's to say nothing of the two children he
has had in the interim, the most dramatic part of what he calls
"a whole world change".
Success,
he says, prompted a good deal of soul-searching about where he
wants his life to go.
"I
could make a living doing voiceovers and going to Hercules and
Xena fan conventions for the rest of my life. And I've had offers
of work in the States but it's all going to be the same science
fiction stuff. After all that work, I felt a bit lost but since
I made a decision that the theatre was what I wanted to do, it's
been good."
Hurst
promises a Hamlet no one's seen before. The play, Shakespeare's
longest (it would run four hours if staged uncut) is routinely
and heavily edited but this director has taken one of those broadswords
to the text, removing all the political subplots (farewell, Fortinbras)
and stripping it down to a classy soap opera.
Along
the way, famous lines have remained on the rehearsal room floor.
Polonius, for example, now a nasty schemer rather than an avuncular
ditherer, never gets to say: "This above all: to thine own
self be true."
"It's
a family drama," says Hurst, "regardless of whether
you put in all the Fortinbras stuff or not. It still comes down
to the psychology."
The
years that Hurst, now in his mid-40s, wears so lightly raise other
issues. He's cast a Claudius barely older than himself "so
when he says, 'Now our cousin Hamlet and our son', it's a sick,
terrible joke.
"What
does it mean for a man of my age to have not dealt with the idea
of his mother in bed with someone? The truth of that for a man
who is 40 is different from the truth for a man in his 30s."
Meanwhile
he leaves Ophelia in her 20s which increases the isolation of
a character he, as director, uses even more cruelly than Hamlet--or
Shakespeare--did.
"And
what I've found really amazing is that with all that modern stuff
we're doing, the script just stands up."
If
it seems like a one-man show, it's not. Hurst is supported by
a cast with a smattering of veterans--Elizabeth Hawthorne as Gertrude,
David Aston as Polonius, newly arrived Londoner Ray Trickitt as
Claudius--but in earnest of his hope that the Large Group will
become a training ground for new talent, he has cast many students
and recent graduates of Unitec's Performing Arts course.
And
he also pays tribute to Penny who has been a stern director of
the director-as-actor.
"I
need him if I want to take it that next step," he says. "I
can give you a slick and snazzy Hamlet. I've already got that
if the truth be known because it came so fully formed into my
head. But last time I don't think I got there. I need to give
it another go and to get there I need more pressure on the emotions.
"It's
not a matter of wallowing but that really full-on thing that the
real tragedians have. Whether I've got it I don't know but I want
it."
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