bovna ara bovna

Last night Hamlet in the theatre, produced by Robert Sturua. Another zany, funky performance!

The set was very plain - a bare stage, with a wall consisting of room-height coloured plastic panels at the back. This caused a severe draft from the stage. The characters wore generally normal clothes, eg trench coats etc, but with colourful patchwork edges, and other such little details. It was a bit confusing that Hamlet's mother (dressed as a 1920s flapper) and King Claudius were younger than Hamlet himself....

Sturua seems to go in for a lot of song and dance; even in Hamlet, though less of the song. Some of the music (Kancheli's music) was from his piece 'Styx' which Sturua has set another play to. It was a very closely choreographed performance - very funny and very colourful. A character moving like a person with cerebral palsy represented the ghost. Hamlet kept changing costumes, seemingly like someone with multiple personality disorder. The deaths were never quite final. The plot was a bit difficult to follow (not having read it in advance....) but the speech 'To be or not to be' was very clear...Hamlet came to the front of the stage, wondering what to do, behind him were a crowd of people whispering 'bovna ara bovna', suddenly Hamlet burst into finest Queen's English 'to be or not to be'.... and that was the end of the speech. Which makes me think that liberties were taken with the text....

It's definitely one to see again (even though it is long), next time with more preparation. Someone said that they had heard that the Georgians are the best interpreters of Shakespeare apart from the English. There certainly is a lot of Shakespeare going on - I could have seen the Midsummer Night's Dream a couple of nights before.