Hamletas

Hamletas Hamletas. By William Shakespeare. LIFE Vilnius. Teatro Fabbricone, Prato, Italy. 11 January 1998.

The Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekro sius is widely regarded as the preeminent young director of Eastern Europe. His first major success was his 1986 Uncle Vanya, which later toured the United States. Over the last decade Nekro sius's reputation has grown, with his innovative productions of Chekhov, Pushkin, and Shakespeare frequently awarded first prizes at theatre festivals in Poland, France, Germany, and Italy. Nekro sius's Hamletas is distinguished by its complex and stunning stage imagery, although the almost continuous musical score by Tadas Sumskas is also a critical part of its texture, ranging from single chords and chimes to repeated player piano and barrel organ tunes to quotations from Verdi, with each element in turn developed like a Wagnerian leitmotif.

The posters for the production show a huge eye with a circular saw blade for the iris, and the image of the saw blade indeed haunts the production. It hangs all evening slanting from looped chains above the actors' heads downstage center, always accented with light and sometimes slowly turning so that its reflection momentarily blinds the audience. The actors from time to time acknowledge this grim object as a kind of crystallization of their ominous situation. Hamlet (Andrius Mamontovas) in particular repeatedly focuses upon it with a kind of horrified fascination, as if momentarily and unexpectedly catching another glimpse of the ghost. Clearly it is closely associated with the dead king (Vladas Bagdonas), who before first encountering Hamlet climbs upon a table to wrap the blade in his fur greatcoat, temporarily hiding its cruel cutting edges and gleaming surface.

Another central and more varied image in the production is that of ice and water, with the related image of objects (like the too too solid flesh) dissolving....