After a late-summer downpour, there’s a rainbow in the sky over
Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s clearly visible from the Courtyard Theatre, where
David Tennant will imminently take the stage for another night in the Royal
Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet. A queue for returns snakes along
the front of the building, 40-strong, though unless the coach ferrying the
Doctor Who Appreciation Society crashes on the motorway, only one or two
have the tiniest hope of getting in. The entire four-month run sold out as
soon as Tennant’s agent put the phone down.
Oddly undaunted, a mother passes the time by reading aloud to her 12-year-old
son. A greying American hippy, she’s chilly and fearsome and the boy looks
as though he ceased being breast-fed in June. The book is some breathless
slab of nonsense about androids surviving an ecological meltdown. The boy
spots the rainbow and tugs at his mother’s sleeve. She presses on. He tugs
again. And again, until the mother’s patience eventually runs dry. She hikes
her eyebrows: “Fenton,” she says irritably “The robots, Fenton; just
concentrate on the robots.”
This is what happens to Hamlet or any theatrical work above the level of, say,
Jack and the Beanstalk, that stars the pre-eminent pop-cultural heartthrob
of the day. The boys from The Mighty Boosh in Henry VI, Part III might exert
a similar effect. If culture seldom comes nobler than blank verse and the
association of sensibility inherent in Elizabethan dramaturgy, then it
seldom comes humbler than Doctor Who, the adventures of a Time Lord in a
Dixon of Dock Green phone-box whose sonic screwdriver can’t deactivate the
vortex manipulator.
So there are two audiences here tonight. One strolls through the door minutes
before the curtain rises, the typical Stratford crowd, all linen jackets,
BBC-executive spectacles and gouty paunches. Smugly in the loop, they seems
to consider the buzz in the air and the sense of occasion as their payback
for endless evenings of Pericles, Prince of Tyre starring someone last seen
in a Peter Greenaway film.
The real audience, however, has been here all day, desperate not to miss a
moment with the Radio Times’s Coolest Man on Television, who is also Gay
Times’s Sexiest Man in the Universe. Some are the forlorn middle-aged loners
you always see at stage doors, clutching marker pens and Buyrite bags. But
the bulk start at seven years old and stop at puberty. There are more frilly
turquoise skirts and Lord of the Rings hoodies than you can shake K-9’s
stick at. They bound around the foyer and the cafe in the aimless way of
youth, snapping their heads to scrutinise anyone who enters the building,
then looking off in dismay when it is not a dalek. The mood is more Harry
Potter book signing than investigation of the consequences of moral inertia.
Two precocious lads are discussing the play in the toilets during the
interval, “Why can’t David kill his uncle?” one asks the other. “Because
he’s got issues, dummy,” comes the response.
And soon the Tennant effect will no longer be confined to Stratford-upon-Avon.
The production moves to the Novello Theatre in London in December and,
according to Gregory Doran, director of the Tennant Hamlet, there’s a
possibility that the production will then move to New York.
Having been lost in the rush for tickets in Stratford, the guardians of
Tennant’s fan base are ensuring there’s no repeat in London. Tickets don’t
go on sale to the public until next month. But they’re available right now
to those who’ve paid £15 to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare
Company. That priority allocation, though, is now all-but gone.
“I’ve no doubt that parents are joining the RSC just so they can ensure their
children get tickets,” says Doran. “And what’s wrong with that? I’d never
argue that one route towards Shakespeare is more valid than another. The
important thing is that audiences get there in the end. And preferably
without paying £100 to a tout or somebody on eBay.”
None of this has prevented up to 200 fans congregating at the Courtyard’s
stage door each night, the vast majority materialising minutes after the
curtain has gone down on the murder of Hamlet by Laertes. RSC staff are
bravely enduring the entire Tennant circus.
And if there were not enough Doctor Who geeks at the stage door, Claudius is
played by Patrick Stewart, quondam captain of the Starship Enterprise. All
that seems to prevent the organisation falling on its broadsword with mortal
embarrassment at the plebian vulgarity of it all are the long associations
of Tennant and Stewart with the RSC. Tennant’s earlier stints as a promising
young stage actor in Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors are
remembered particularly fondly.
How things change. For this production, The Doctor Who fan club has issued
guidelines for those fortunate enough to meet Tennant in Stratford. These
make it clear that many of its members are entry-level theatre attenders.
“One of the most unwelcome things in the theatre has to be the mobile
phone,” Eve tells members of the online fan club.
“Mobile phones (along with anything else that bleeps, buzzes or makes any kind
of electrical noise) should be switched off well in advance. Cameras, video
and tape recorders are strictly prohibited in the theatre.” Anticipating
that not all fans, particularly young ones, are used to sitting still for
long periods, she continues: “Once you have taken your seats in the theatre
you are advised to remain in them until the interval so make sure you are
comfortable and have everything you need before the curtain rises.
“Although the performance tends to be exciting and enjoyable, noise from the
audience can be very distracting for the performers, so the audience will be
expected to sit quietly in their seats during the performance. We hope you
all enjoy the show and have a great time!”
Famously, the RSC has had to prohibit the signing of sci-fi souvenirs at the
stage door. “Only Royal Shakespeare Company or production-related
memorabilia will be signed by members of the company,” says the
spokesperson, Nada Zakula. “It’s very flattering that there is so much
interest, but we need to set some limits.”
The director knew that Tennant’s magnetism would work in Hamlet, although he
has been surprised by the hoopla that follows in its wake. “What David
brings is stardust. Hamlet is a self-defining role, and because the play is
so well-known, the audience has to bring some expectations about the actor
who’ll be playing him.
“ The actor has to have the same magnetic pull as the play has had for
centuries. If you don’t have that pull, don’t do the play.
“And, because I’ve worked with him previously, I knew that David had that
pull. Having said that, I had no particular idea that the Doctor Who thing
was quite such a phenomenon. I never expected to be stuck in the middle of
this furore.”
Waiting at the stage door is Lizzie Knight, a 16-year-old who has travelled
from Newcastle to see the actor. “My ticket was way up in the gallery so I
just wanted to see him face-to-face,” she says. “If David was to leave
Doctor Who and return to theatre I wouldn’t be as annoyed as I would have
been if I’d missed him in the play. He is far more convincing and gripping
in the theatre.”
As indeed he is, though his persona in the treacherous courts of medieval
Denmark is not wholly dissimilar to his persona while battling the Ood in
the Mestophelix galaxy. There’s a slight collective intake of breath, in
fact, in the scene where Tennant appears in a grey demob suit almost
identical to the one worn by the Time Lord.
Elsewhere there’s much of the loopy, madcap frivolity he brings to the role of
the time lord. Like the Doctor, Hamlet parrots back foolish remarks in silly
voices; at points you could almost be watching The Shakespeare Code, the
episode in which the Doctor travels through time and discovers a lost play
by the Bard.
Although the play can be watched as it proceeds via closed-circuit TV in the
foyer there are only a handful of viewers; with Tennant, the crucial thing
is to be in his presence, to see the episode that few other Doctor Who fans
will see, to witness personally the Doctor undergoing yet another of his
regenerations, this time into a Danish prince who can’t quite kill the king.
Even the purists have had few reservations about his interpretation. Like
Olivier, Burton and Hopkins, other actors whose theatrical careers were
cross-pollinated at the most rarefied level with the screen, he has that
most beguiling and persuasive of qualities: a superhuman allocation of
charisma. He is also, as the magazine most frequently read by Lisa Simpson
would have it, the ultimate Non-Threatening Boy.
“I wasn’t really interested in the Shakespeare stuff,” says Kayley Milton who
has travelled to Stratford from Burton-on-Trent with her mother. “It was
quite boring and I didn’t understand it.
“ But I’d go anywhere I could to see David. And it’s not because I’m a Doctor
Who fan, for me it’s Blackpool and Casanova.”
Amy, Emma, Beatrice and Chloe, meanwhile, are here for the third time, fresh
from studying Hamlet for their GCSEs. They outline the orthodoxy of the
Tennant devotee, a curiously prim and deferential set of protocols to be
heard from ardent admirers.
Do not fawn over David. Do not pursue him. Accept what amount of his time he
is prepared to give you. Do not pigeonhole him as merely the man who plays
Doctor Who and, most crucially, accept that he is merely human, despite what
your hormones may be telling you.
As the girls are explaining this, Tennant emerges from the stage door in a
blizzard of flashbulbs and hollers. He races round a perimeter of
outstretched posters and programmes, effectively initialling rather than
autographing them.
The faint, cloying musk of hysteria fills the atmosphere. He rabbinically
scrawls DT on one girl’s poster. “Thank you, Doctor Who!” she shouts. And
the glares of Amy, Emma, Beatrice and Chloe briefly chill the midnight air.
Hamlet is at the Novello Theatre, London from December 3
I think the writer is observing the fan phenomenon from a sociological perspective. He seems to have more of an issue with greying American hippie moms who require their coddled offspring ignore rainbows and focus on robots. As a middle aged loner, though, I was NOT forlorn when at the stage door!
Elizabeth, Sydney, Australia
Having never seen a play prior to "Hamlet" and convinced that it would go over my head I would like to state here and now that I understood every part of it - however this article has left me somewhat confused. All I can get from this is that you don't like Dr Who fans...am I right???
Sharon, South Shields, UK