A new play in developmenmt
One night I had a waking vision of a production of Hamlet. I had just finished a novel by Murakami about a group of existential young lovers, and the characters must have seeped into my subconscious.
In my mind’s eye, Hamlet became a hikikomori, cutting all ties with the outside world, locked up in his bedroom with his computer. Having just lost his father, he has sunk into a deep depression. His mother, Gertrude, leaves meal trays for him at the door. He is obsessed with video games, disappearing into a fantasy world of violence and war, surrounded by icy Nordic landscapes where he can become a hero. His computer talks to him through a ‘chatbot’, a computer programme that has taken on the voice of his father, inciting him to pursue a mission of vengeance. Characters and episodes from the Shakespeare play emerge from his laptop, either as live characters or AI chatbot voices.
The play will be created with just five characters: Hamlet, two young friends who play several characters, Ophelia and Hamlet’s mother. I’d like to experiment with a new way of telling this monumental classic, cutting all the political and war themes, and reducing it to an intimate, psychological study. Again, it is a fascinating study on families and on children destroyed by the actions of their parents.
This will be a very free adaptation, mixing texts from the original language with contemporary improvisations. Electronic music will play an important role: Hamlet will sing « to be or not to be” , as if he were inventing the words for a new song on melancholy trap beats. The set will be minimalist, mainly Hamlet’s bedroom, in a contemporary family home.
We explored these ideas in March 2023, in a first experimental workshop with a small group of actors, and saw that the play lent itself perfectly to this irreverent treatment. Hamlet House will be an intimate and violent show, dealing with the dangerous cocktail of depression, drugs and technology which now threatens the gen Zs, numbing their senses, preventing them from seeking their place in the world and realising their dreams.
