Robert Icke’s Hamlet

In Robert Icke’s modern-dress production of Hamlet, performed in repertory with Oresteia at the Park Avenue Armory, everyone is being watched. Here the nobility of Denmark are surrounded by, and often court the attention of, cameras. The palace itself is under close watch: the play begins with the guards monitoring the grounds through an elaborate surveillance system consisting of multiple cameras. Meanwhile, Hamlet and his family also endure the sort of media scrutiny faced by a modern-day royal family; and like those real-life royal families, this fictional one tries to put on a good face for the millions who watch them. The guards and the media are not the only ones who have access to what happens behind the scenes: upstage and downstage are divided by glass doors, giving the audience a window into much of the action offstage.

Surveillance and recording are the central motifs that guide this production. The death of King Hamlet, the succession of Claudius, the war between Denmark and Norway, Hamlet’s funeral, and Fortinbras’s seizure of the Danish throne are the focus of intense media coverage that the audience watches in pre-recorded videos throughout. The player king and queen pantomime home videos that show them dandling a young child (clearly meant to resemble Hamlet’s childhood)…