Philip Dodd is enjoying his role of Polonius in the Bell Shakespeare’s production of Hamlet, which is making its way around Australia and now Tasmania. Philip loves Tasmania and is looking forward to performing at the Theatre Royal.
This production is set in a European war time era to explore the political situation mirrored in Hamlet’s Europe, including the idea of spy networks, demonstrated with Hamlet himself is never left without surveillance, chiefly by his uncle Claudius’ head of intelligence Polonius.
Polonius, who in Philip’s word can be portrayed as ‘a buffoon, Pantalone’ or at least ‘comically’ said he wanted his Polonius to be ‘laughed’ at but equally for the audience to be ‘chilled’ by his actions.
Philip says the challenge for the troupe as creative artists is to demonstrate to a contemporary audience in 2015 that the 400 year old text is still remarkably relevant. This is especially important to demonstrate when the production visits schools.
Even for those audiences that may not be natural students of Shakespeare, Philip says there are cues that the audience pick up on, so entrenched are aspects of this play in popular culture such as the ‘alas poor Yorick’ lines which are responded to by ‘I knew him well’. For the record, the ‘well’ is not in the original Shakespeare! A similar recognition of the play is found in those famous words of English literature ‘To be’ with the audience responding with ‘or not to be’, in this case correctly quoted.
Proving that Shakespeare is part of our collective conscious and still resonates with us, this play, the story of a son’s revenge on his uncle, who he believes murdered his father is retold in stories of popular culture ranging from the angst in the animal kingdom in The Lion King and galactic genetics in Star Wars.
Phil shares with me some profound advice he received from the great teacher, the late Nick Enright who said, that when you go to work brush your feet on the carpet before going in and when you leave work brush them on the carpet going out, don’t take the emotions from home with you or take those from work, home with you. It’s sound advice and very applicable to the heaviness of heart in Hamlet.
You can see The Bell Shakespeare’s production of Hamlet at the following venues.
Princess Theatre, Launceston 22 September
Theatre Royal, Hobart 24–26 September
Paula Xiberras
