It's not often you go to the bar during the interval of a play and overhear
Ewan McGregor asking his friend if “that was a real baby that Hamlet just
carried on stage”. Yet in a production of Shakespeare as unorthodox as the
Factory's, people are bound to get confused. It was indeed a genuine
newborn, plucked from its mother's arms, though it must be said she looked
delighted.
He might be a veteran actor, and on a night off from starring in Othello
across town, but McGregor is as surprised as any other audience member by
the turn of events this Hamlet is taking. How can we remain so tense while
Gertrude is poisoned by smeared chocolate cake? So thrilled as Laertes warns
Ophelia about men's wicked ways while toying with a bulky marrow? So
genuinely terrified as Hamlet and Laertes duel over who can read the loudest
from a leaflet?
All these props are plucked at random from the audience, who are reseated at
the start of each act as the actors progressively take over the chairs, the
bar and the corridors. Oh, and the cast decide who will play which part only
as the performance begins - they have all memorised several.
It's a rare feat for a play to use such gimmickry to create real profundity,
yet it works - McGregor tells me afterwards that it was “just the most
amazing thing to see. Brilliantly directed, brilliantly played, brilliantly
executed. I thought it was incredible - and terrifying. I mean, can you
imagine not even knowing if you're going to play Hamlet or not?” Yet without
McGregor it might not be happening at all.
Alex Hassell, 27, co-founder of the Factory theatre company, explains how the
A-list actor got involved with these fledgeling stars. Hassell was
rehearsing for a show at the Globe in early 2006 when McGregor, who happened
to be walking past, grabbed him to say that he and his wife had loved the
BBC3 comedy show that Hassell had starred in, Bonkers. “But they'd missed
the last episode, so I sent him a video of it and then thought, well, why
not enclose a letter about this theatre group I'd started up with my
friends, see if he likes the sound of it.”
The Factory was set up because, on leaving drama school, Hassell and the
group's co-founder Tim Evans, also 27, “wanted to know why all of our mates,
who were brilliant, were still so frustrated. “Acting's not like writing,
you can't just do it in isolation, you need a part. But the repertory system
isn't what it was,” says Hassell.
As it turned out, McGregor did indeed like the sound of it - and sent them a
generous cheque. Delighted with this unexpected cash injection, the actors
realised they could try other wealthy stars for donations, especially since
the Arts Council had turned them down. They don't wish to name too many
names, but Elton John was another who came to their aid. And with the
esteemed actors Bill Nighy and Mark Rylance agreeing to be patrons, it
seemed they were all set. But why do they make their performances so
difficult for themselves?
Evans says: “We want to do the total opposite of what people think they need
to do to get a good show on, which is get it in the listings, get a good
review and sell all the tickets before the day.
“We don't want to be listed in Time Out, really. And a review is pointless
because you will only be seeing one production out of endless different
ones. We're never going to do a press night. We ask, what has become
accepted as necessity in the theatre? And then scrape those things away, to
see if you don't need them to put on great performances.” Of course, they
didn't really mind when one paper [London's Evening Standard] reviewed them
anyway, calling it: “a theatrical coup ... unbearably poignant,
unrepeatable” (and clearly won't mind any publicity generated by this piece
either).
The Factory perform Hamlet at 5pm every Sunday, somewhere in London,
preferably hijacking a theatre stage currently dressed for a different
production. Word of mouth or an e-mail announcement a few days before are
the only ways of knowing where it's on. Audiences are given badges so they
can recognise each other later, like a secret society - I've already been
spotted with mine. Every ticket costs a tenner and the cast are a big
revolving group of unpaid actors, so if anybody is away working, the show
will go on.
As Evans explains: “Most young theatre groups will stage one production and
it's an immediate endgame. Rehearsing for weeks for a five-night run in a
small theatre, nobody really comes to see it and afterwards they're right
back in exactly the same position they were in before - stuck and frustrated
again. So we thought long-term.”
They workshopped this Hamlet for a year first, having taken their inspiration
from their main director, the Globe's former associate director Tim Carroll,
who invented the main premise of the production while working in Hungary in
2005. “When I rehearsed Hamlet in Budapest,” says Carroll, “I often found
that some of the actors were unavailable. I didn't care: I just rehearsed
with whomever I was given. Because I had four Horatios, two Poloniuses etc,
there was always something I could work on. In this it was more like
training a football team than rehearsing a cast.”
There is a trend towards this deconstructed method of audience involvement,
with the Punchdrunk group's radical productions of Faustus and The Masque of
The Red Death making audiences chase around after the cast. But the work of
the Factory feels more welcoming to the paying guest. Even McGregor says
that, while he tries to aim Iago's soliloquies directly at some- body in the
Donmar's audience, he can't hope to get as close as these guys can.
The Factory liken their methods not to theatre companies but to Radiohead, who
have escaped their major record label by distributing their album online and
announcing their gigs by e-mail on the day they happen, or to the guerrilla
graffiti art of Banksy, or flash mobs. Indeed, their dream is to have Jonny
Greenwood from Radiohead strumming guitar on stage, while Philip Seymour
Hoffman, just passing through town, takes on a part. It might be a pipedream
- “but then we thought that about having a beer after our play with Ewan
McGregor”. Watch this space. Or, for that matter, updates on the website
below
www.seehamlet.co.uk
