To be cultured or not to be cultured is the question at the Experimental Theater this weekend as Taiwan Mobius Strip Theatre and Hong Kong On&On Theatre Workshop present a deconstructed version of Hamlet in which the denouement takes place not in Denmark but in an imaginary Tibet as the beginnings of a modern ice age put an end to Ophelia’s love affair with Hamlet.
Hamletmaxhine-hamlet b. (哈奈馬仙之hamlet b.) presents a version of Shakespeare’s Great Dane that was first stripped by German post-modern dramatist Heiner Mueller for a 1977 production titled Hamlet Machine and then reconstructed — for a second time — by playwright and director Chan Ping-chiu (陳炳釗).
If that doesn’t sound intriguing — or confusing enough — it’s also not really a play about investigating the murder of a king and the descent into madness of a prince, but an examination of modern consumer culture, the fate of theater and culture, and the lives of the people who work in “the cultural industry.”
Photo Courtesy of National Theater concert hall
The National Theater Concert Hall is presenting the piece as part of its New Ideas series and if the reaction to the Chan’s first re-examination of Mueller’s classic — produced in Hong Kong in 2008 — is anything to go by, this new version is sure to raise hackles and spark debate in the theater world both in Taipei and elsewhere.
Mueller took the original 100-page Hamlet script and re-assembled it into five parts, with each part being under 10 pages, turning it into an examination of the role of intellectuals during the East German communist era. Instead of the conventional narrative, it is largely a series of monologues.
In a telephone interview with the Taipei Times on Tuesday, Alex Cheung (張藝生) — who is co-directing the play alongside Chan — said the 2008 production was based half on Mueller’s work and half on Chan’s own script, while this time the split is more 80 to 85 percent Chan, 10 to 15 percent Mueller.
“The first production created a lot of debate in Hong Kong among other theater groups. At the time Hong Kong was planning to build an arts district [in West Kowloon] and spending a lot of money on it. A lot of people questioned the expense. The playwright [Chan] was questioning whether the industry was creative enough, if there would be a distortion when you are working for profit,” Cheung said. “But now his point of view has changed. He sees the issue from different angles.”
Of the six actors in the cast, two are from Hong Kong, three from Taiwan and one from Shanghai. Cheung said there are four main characters: Hamlet, who is an actor; a corporate executive (the CEO); Ophelia and Mueller himself.
“Hamlet thinks theater can’t change society. Then he meets the CEO character who says he can make Hamlet a superstar through a production called ‘Hamlet.b.’ Hamlet does become a big star and does a lot of shows. But one day at the five-minute call [the alert to actors that the curtain will go up in five minutes] he feels confused, he questions himself, what he is doing,” Cheung said. “Ophelia is a very clever, tasteful consumer. She says she has an independent mind, doesn’t think she’s an average person. She falls in love with Hamlet. She wants to follow him to Tibet — not the real one — where there is a big cultural district and he’s going to be in a show. At the end, the whole art district becomes frozen over and Ophelia can’t meet up with Hamlet.”
“The Heiner Mueller character represents the ‘anti-authority.’ He’s against over-consumption,” Cheung said.
“We open this weekend, then take the production to Hong Kong and to Guangzhou,” he said, adding that he couldn’t wait to see what the reaction was in all three cities.
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