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| Belinda McClory as Gertrude in Because the Night |
When Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith wrote the song “Because the Night” in 1977, I doubt they were thinking about Hamlet and Ophelia – the song about desire and lust does not really describe the fractured couple of Shakespeare’s play. Springsteen was writing the song for himself to sing, but struggled with it until his sound engineer, Jimmy Iovine, who was working with Smith at the time, introduced the pair. Together they created Patti Smith’s first and, arguably, greatest hit.
Theatre, as with song writing, is hugely collaborative, even
if we often elevate singer-songwriters and playwrights above the rest of the
creative collective. Immersive theatre turns up the viscerality in all areas of
the experience of watching a performance. You’re closer to the actors, the sets,
the lights and the sound. You’re within a world where you can appreciate
details you would never see on stage: drawings, notes, letters, photographs, the
feel of dirt on your hands, the crunch of bark underfoot.
And so we step into Elsinore, a logging town, where Claudia
has been fucking Gertrude and Hamlet is mourning his dead father. And there’s
something mysterious happening in the woods.
Because the Night is the first production by
Malthouse theatre since it was shutdown by COVID in 2020. It’s a collaboration
by a dozen artists behind the scene and two rotating casts of six actors.
There’s an audience of 60 at each performance, who are
divided up into three groups, starting in the Bedroom, the Gymnasium or the
Royal Office. Each group watches an opening scene – I was with Ophelia in the
Gymnasium, as she trained with a knife; her victim, a block of wood from the
woods surrounding the castle. And then the audience is left to explore the
space. Rooms of all shapes and sizes. Long corridors. And all those details you
would never see on stage.
The text, by Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Ra Chapman and Matthew
Lutton, uses Hamlet only as a foundation. The audience recognises
character names or understands their familial relationships, but can’t use
Shakespeare’s play to map out their journey or the narrative thrust. Not quite.
Claudia is a gender-swapped Claudius. Ophelia seems to have plans of her own.
And while Hamlet’s whining is reminiscent of the original, this time he doesn’t
seem suicidal.
Is there an analogue to the “to be or not to be” speech that
I missed? I won’t know, unless I go back and follow him all night. Khisraw
Jones-Shukoor’s Hamlet strut and fret his hour-and-a-half upon the “stage”, but
I only saw moments of his magnetic, angry performance. And on another night you
might see Keegan Joyce instead.
I watched Hamlet with Gertrude in her bedroom, seated next
to the bed, as the plan for a duel unfurled. After Hamlet left, I stayed to
watch Belinda McClory because if you have the chance to watch an incredible actor
do what she does best in close-up, why not take a moment to sit in silence and
observe? McClory’s stillness and poise belie the turmoil underneath Gertrude’s
surface.
I followed her to a dismantled throne room and I thought
this was a personal one-on-one performance, only to find out later that someone
else I knew was watching from the other side of a two-way mirror. Listening and
observing from the shadows is an important part of Hamlet and to be able
to do it yourself – watching audience members who don’t realise they are being observed
– is another in a long line of visceral thrills in a show like this.
Just as Bruce Springsteen’s Because the Night is
nothing without Patti Smith bringing it fully and finally to life, this Malthouse
production is nothing without the work of the designers. The set design makes
it feel like you are there. There are no corners cut here. I have seen
immersive works before where the hallways were just black curtains; here the
corridors are painted bright blue, with brass lighting fixtures lighting the
way. Each room is a world of its own; some of them feel like logical
progressions from the last room you visited and others are disjointed and
nothing like you expected.
I’ve loved Marg Horwell’s set designs for a decade or more
and to be inside a labyrinth of them is a special gift. A master bedroom covered
in shiny wallpaper, heavy drapes along one wall, half covered in flowers of condolence
is at one moment comforting – because you might expect this in Hamlet,
but the longer you stay there, the more off-putting it is.
The royal office is imposing tall ceilings and a staircase
to nowhere. The gymnasium feels like a gymnasium. But the more you look, the
more you find. Rooms behind mirrors. Corridors behind corridors. A games room.
And a grand old woodshed, with rusted corrugated-iron sheets and bark strewn
across the floor.
The audience are silent observers, dressed in cloaks and
rabbit masks, as if ready for an arcane ritual out in the woods. There’s a mystery
happening in the rooms, of course, each man and woman with their own agenda.
But the presence of a forest surrounding the castle is felt in timber-lined
rooms and carvings. If the people inside are making their own plans in here, what
is happening out among the trees? You might only know by reading a post-it note
or a hastily-scrawled warning letter. And what’s with all the pigs?
Immersive theatre is performance and art installation and
story all intertwined. Maybe you’ll enter Because the Night looking for Shakespeare
or a reference to Patti Smith, but what you need to be open to is… everything
else. Because you cannot see everything; I only saw Polonius briefly once
before the bows at the end. And you may not even find every room. But as with
all art, the experience is a reflection of you. Enjoy the set design and J.
David Franzke’s unsettling composition and sound design. Stand uncomfortably
close to actors and go through doors alone.
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the Night belongs to each audience member that chooses to immerse themselves. Your experience of it will be unique. I found it mysterious and captivating. Go see it for yourself.
Tickets are on sale through May and the show is planned to run for the rest of 2021.
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| Gertrude & Hamlet near the end of Because the Night |
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