‘Look here, upon this picture, and on this’: Representations of Hamlet in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1993–2006

Abstract

This article addresses the question, to what extent do New Zealand productions of Shakespeare attempt to reframe the setting or localise the text? Is it problematic to do so? Productions which introduce a Māori element are briefly discussed, including an Othello set during the Māori Land Wars of the nineteenth century. The principal focus is on productions of Hamlet, a play which has retained its popularity on the New Zealand stage, but which seems to resist a post-colonial, ‘indigenised’ reading. Productions staged between 1995 and 2006, directed by David O'Donnell, Michael Hurst and David Lawrence, and which demonstrate various approaches to the text, are discussed. Set beside them are two works that variously re-appropriate Shakespeare's text: Jean Betts's postmodern feminist pastiche Ophelia Thinks Harder (1993); and Toa Fraser's urban, diasporic Bare (1998). They represent the traditionally ‘marginalised’ voices – Betts as female, Fraser as Pacific Island immigrant – who address in different ways the notion that Hamlet resists post-colonial re-appropriation.

Notes

1. Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. by Boleslaw Taborski, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1975), p. 5.

2. Denis Welch, ‘As We Like It’, New Zealand Listener, 29 May–4 June 2004, <http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3342/artsbooks/2026/as_we_like_it.html>, accessed 8 January 2008.

3. <http://www.shakespeare.org.nz/2007/007GuidelinesPDF.pdf> [accessed 5 January 2009].

4. However, the indigenous population may still be viewed as ‘other’ or exotic. Director Alison Quigan specifically chose Māori actor Matu Ngaropo to play Othello at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North (2003), but ‘didn't attempt to set it in NZ, or suggest he was Māori’. She wanted to imply a subtextual parallel with successful Māori sporting heroes. ‘These men are revered role models but do we really want them to marry our daughters? Is racism always just hiding beneath the surface?’ (Email correspondence, 27 August 2008).

5. Production discussed with Cathy Downes in telephone interview, 15 January 2008. As she comments, textual changes were made simply to ‘neutralise’ certain specified locations. For example, Venice became ‘north’ or ‘the city’, Turk became ‘the foe’, and Cyprus became the name of the long boat on which much of the play's action was set. The production was reworked at Downstage in 2007, directed by Jonathan Hendry.

6. Michael Neill, ‘Shakespeare Upside Down’, in World and Stage: Essays for Colin Gibson, ed. by Greg Waite, Jocelyn Harris, Heather Murray and John Hale, Otago Studies in English 6 (Dunedin: University of Otago, 1998), pp. 135–58 (p. 149).

7. See note 39 for a full listing of professional and cooperative productions of Hamlet in New Zealand 1990–2006.

8. Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, p. 52.

9. Telephone interview with Elric Hooper, 9 January 2008.

10. David Lawrence, ‘‘‘Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore''’, Bacchanals website: <http://www.thebacchanals.net/plays/othello/> [accessed 5 January 2008] (para. 4 of 9).

11. Neill, ‘Shakespeare Upside Down’, p. 151.

12. Paul Bushnell, ‘Othello’, Christchurch Star, 6 March 1989, p. 22.

13. David Lawrence, ‘“O my offence is rank …”: The Bacchanals Hamlet (2002)’, <http://www.thebacchanals.net/plays/hamlet/> [accessed 5 January 2008]. This provides an extensive discussion of the production's intentions, and the success or failure of its execution.

14. The production is discussed by Phillipa Kelly in ‘Performing Australian Identity: Gendering King Lear’, Theatre Journal, 57 (2005), 205–27. In 1997, Murray Edmond had presented Queen Lear at Auckland University, which similarly regendered the roles.

15. David Lawrence, ‘“I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle …” The Bacchanals –Hamlet (2006)’, <http://www.thebacchanals.net/plays/hamlet06/> [accessed 8 January 2008], and email correspondence, 31 January 2008.

16. Laurie Atkinson, ‘Common Kiwi touch', Dominion Post, 4 December 2006.

17. No. 8 wire is used for constructing fences on New Zealand's many farms. The wire is made in New Zealand, and, as here, is frequently used as a kind of synecdoche for New Zealand's capacity to improvise homely devices with few resources.

18. Mark Amery, (title omitted), Theatre Australasia, October 1994, reproduced in Australian and New Zealand Theatre Record, 8.9 (September 1994), 87.

19. Michael Hurst, email correspondence, 21 January 2008.

20. ‘These are Serious Weapons’, New Zealand Herald, 17 May 2003, accessed via Factiva.

21. Jonathan Pryce as Hamlet (Royal Court, London, 1980) had famously also rendered the Ghost invisible, but the actor summoned his father's voice from within himself.

22. Telephone interview, 25 January 2008. Otherwise unattributed quotes and production details in this Hurst section come from this interview.

23. ‘Stripped Down but Beefed Up’, New Zealand Herald, 26 May 2003, accessed via Factiva.

24. Daly-Peoples, ‘New Hamlet a Man of Infinite Jest’.

25. Peter Calder, ‘Hurst's Hamlet Season Highlight’, New Zealand Herald, 1 November 2004, accessed via Factiva.

26. Frances Edmond, ‘To be Continued’, New Zealand Listener, 14–20 June 2003, <http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3292/artsbooks/79/to_be_continued.html> [accessed 13 April 2009].

27. Calder, ‘Hurst's Hamlet Season Highlight’.

28. Email correspondence with David O'Donnell, 14 January 2008. The substance of the information in the following two paragraphs is drawn from this correspondence.

29. The New Zealand Listener review describes Davies' Ghost thus: ‘Caked in a white clay, he appears screeching yet soundless, and moves as if restrained by purgatorial minions’ (Anna Chinn, ‘Infinite Zest’, New Zealand Listener, 24–30 September 2005, <http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3411/artsbooks/4732/infinite_zest.html> [accessed 21 February 2008].

30. My attention was drawn to this point by actor Hilary Halba, who played Gertrude.

31. Hooper had seen and been excited by the physicality of Théâtre du Soleil's Henry IV Part One in Paris, 1984, whilst Kurosawa's samurai Throne of Blood (1957) is an obvious source. Hooper has also noted that he was further influenced, in part, by the simplicity of Trevor Nunn's 1976 Stratford Macbeth. (Elric Hooper telephone interview, 9 January 2008.)

32. Elric Hooper telephone interview, 9 January 2008.

33. Jean Betts and Wm. Shakespeare, Ophelia Thinks Harder (Wellington: The Women's Play Press, 1994; all parenthetic page references in the following paragraphs are to this edition).

34. ‘Writer's Note’, Ophelia Thinks Harder, n. pag.

35. Parry and McGlone had created these two ‘men’ who were striving to get in touch with their ‘inner woman’, and had played them on numerous occasions, including a full-length stage production, Digger and Nudger Try Harder (1989), directed by Betts. I took this one step further by casting a female Hamlet in my own 1996 production of Ophelia Thinks Harder (see image 3).

36. For further discussion of the text, alongside Romeo and Tusi by Oscar Kightley and Erolia Ifopo and Hamlet – He Was A Grave Digger by Richard Huber, see Lisa Warrington, ‘Comedy and Irreverence: Rewriting Shakespeare in Aotearoa/New Zealand’, in Shakespeare's Legacy: The Appropriation of the Plays in Post-colonial Drama, ed. by Norbert Schaffeld (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2005), pp. 125–40.

37. See David O'Donnell and Bronwyn Tweddle, ‘Toa Fraser: Shifting Boundaries in Pacific Island Comedy’, Australasian Drama Studies, 42 (April 2003), 123–37 (p. 129).

38. Toa Fraser, Two Plays by Toa Fraser (Wellington: Playmarket, 2007; all parenthetic page references in the following paragraphs are to this edition). Fraser is a Fijian/British playwright, resident in New Zealand.

39. Professional/cooperative productions of Hamlet in New Zealand 1990–2006:

1990 Mercury Theatre Auckland, dir. Raymond Hawthorne. Paul Gittins as Hamlet.

1990 Bats Theatre Wellington, dir. Simon Bennett, John Leigh as Hamlet.

1992 Court Theatre Christchurch, dir. Elric Hooper, Erik Thomson as Hamlet.

1994 Watershed Theatre Auckland, dir. Michael Hurst, Michael Hurst as Hamlet.

1995 St James Theatre Dunedin, dir Fiona Pulford, Jeremy Elwood as Hamlet.

1996 Circa Theatre Wellington, dir. Bruce Phillips, Tim Balme as Hamlet.

1997 Centrepoint Theatre Palmerston North, dir. Alison Quigan, Ross Gumbley as Hamlet.

2002 Fringe Festival Wellington, dir. David Lawrence, Carey Smith as Hamlet.

2003 Maidment Theatre Auckland, dir. Michael Hurst, Michael Hurst as Hamlet.

2005 Fortune Theatre Dunedin, dir. David O'Donnell, Matt Wilson as Hamlet.

2006 Court Theatre Christchurch, dir. Peter Evans, Gareth Reeves as Hamlet.

2006 Various venues Wellington, dir. David Lawrence, Simon Vincent as Hamlet.

Further Shakespeare productions in New Zealand may be searched for in the Theatre Aotearoa database, <http://tadb.otago.ac.nz>