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Hamlet and Ophelia Go Swimming

 
Lauren Moreau Review by Lauren Moreau 2 Published: 8 Aug 2014 Gryphon@WestEnd Show Dates: 5 Aug 2014-8 Aug 2014

This show has an attractive title and a premise brimming with potential: a series of scenes between Hamlet and Ophelia in the years prior to the events of Hamlet, combined with dialogue and correspondence from the playwright’s own life. It should be a lovely meditation on young romance, but it’s hampered by awkward staging and clunky dialogue. 

It’s a good idea and it’s been done in earnest, but Hamlet and Ophelia Go Swimming isn’t anything special

The choice to represent Hamlet and Ophelia with five different couples is an interesting one and the pairs of actors are nicely matched in terms of physicality and chemistry, but they all remain seated onstage throughout the piece, acting as audience members during the scenes. It’s bit disconcerting and self-congratulatory when performers laugh at their own show, particularly when the dialogue isn’t all that funny.

The songs in between scenes are a nice touch, and the cast all have lovely voices despite their habit of singing extremely pretentious lyrics with very grim facial expressions, like a deadly earnest high school show choir. At one point, an actor accompanies the singers on a bright green plastic melodica; the whole thing is aggressively whimsical. There’s also extremely twee dialogue in vein of “they were two people who had never met each other. They were like two hummingbirds, who had also never met each other.” All the while, I had a violent urge to shout, like Jack Lemmon critiquing Tony Curtis’ Cary Grant impression in Some Like It Hot, “nobody talks like that!”

It seems the director really just wanted to make a quirky short film rather than a theatre production. Though there are some heartfelt moments, most of the scenes would work far better on film and the cast all seem to be acting for an invisible camera. The use of music suggests a soundtrack rather than accompaniment.

It’s a good idea and it’s been done in earnest, but Hamlet and Ophelia Go Swimming isn’t anything special: it’s mostly just young people with alternative hairstyles describing their relationships in terms of birds, lakes, and other natural phenomena. It’s a pity, because in theory this could be quite a nice show. 

Amir Nisi

Lauren Moreau

Lauren Moreau is from a variety of places in the US. Her theatrical interests include acting, writing, and directing as well as reviewing. Lauren recently won the LIFT Festival's Critical Writing Opportunity, and was selected to review a show at the National Theatre and attend workshops with critic Maddy Costa. She currently studies English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.

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The Blurb:

An exploration of the cyclical disintegration of romantic relationships using music, mask, and text taken from literature and reality explore what could have happened between Hamlet and Ophelia before the events of Hamlet. Contemporary monologues chronicling an ascent into and a descent out of love are interrupted by lines from the play and ghosts from the future. Physical theatre and dance are used to create meaningful images, carefully organising the shards of a shattered relationship into a ritualistic piece of devised theatre.
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