Hamlet as a Woman

The BFI are screening a new print of a remarkable film of Hamlet with live piano accompaniment on January 27th.
I studied this 1920 silent film when I was preparing research on the performance history of Hamlet for the third Arden edition of the play. It was a complete revelation.
The main character is a woman who has been brought up as a boy so that the family's dynasty can be maintained in the aftermath of war.

Asta Nielsen, who plays Hamlet, was a role model for Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, and was one of the leading actors of her generation.

Director Sven Gade’s amazing retelling of the play also offers insights into the European psyche in the wake of Germany's defeat in the First World War.

What I find so extraordinary about Shakespeare's Hamlet is how so many people in so many different parts of the world find emotional and political resonances that speak to their own history and culture.

And that's one of the reasons Hamlet is essential reading for every screenwriter.

There's a terrific short film about a group of musicians accompanying Asta Nielsen's scenes in the film live at the Berlin Festival. Click on the link to watch it:

Shakespeare's Indoor Theatre

When I was Leverhulme Research Fellow at Shakespeare's Globe, I was thrilled to be involved, watching the building take shape, working with the directors and actors on the first productions there. It was an immense sadness to everyone that Sam Wanamaker who worked so hard to realise his dream of recreating the Globe did not live to see the first performances.

He also planned on reconstructing an indoor Jacobean theatre on the site, and when the Globe was built, the shell of the indoor theatre was built, but we knew that this would have to be delayed until there were the resources to develop the space.

So I'm thrilled that now that is going to happen. I can't wait to see The Tempest in the indoor theatre. It was for a theatre space like this that Shakespeare wrote his wonderfully surreal masterpiece.

And that's got me thinking about film adaptations of The Tempest...