Hamlet | Collage is the first Russian production by legendary Canadian stage director Robert Lepage. Taking more than two years to create, the result is a high-tech, high-energy action performance designed for only one actor – Russia’s national artist, Evgeny Mironov. Original, imaginative and totally inspiring, it is Shakespeare like you’ve never seen before.
Lepage states of Hamlet | Collage: “Hamlet’s main problem is that he thinks too much. He doesn’t find a solution to a task. He is a character who always uses his brain. All in all, a skull serves as a powerful symbol of the theatre and Hamlet. That’s why Shakespeare devised a big scene with a skull, which – after all – is a human’s head. I surely don’t have answers to my numerous questions. That’s why it was interesting to stage a play with a single actor, with the actor’s head.”
Indeed, Lepage and Mironov have both created a tragedy of the consciousness far more potent than the tragedy of real life. In this prison of the mind, set within the confines of a huge open-sided cube that is suspended and spun above the stage, Mironov magically plays all of the characters himself. From Ophelia to Polonius, he deftly walks, runs, leaps and reposes on its walls, floors and ceilings. Mironov’s adroit performance is enhanced by Lepage’s lighting and video design, which inventively turns the cube from a cell of a mental asylum, to a library, to the ramparts, to a bubbling pond, amongst numerous other vivid settings.
Already one of the biggest events of Moscow’s theatre season, Lepage’s Hamlet | Collage promises to be a visually stunning take on one of the Bard’s familiar favourites.
Performed in Russian with English surtitles.
Rating: Advisory (Some Mature Content and Nudity).
Date:12, 13 August
Venue: Drama Centre Theatre
Duration: 2h25, no intermission
Tickets:
$40, $60, $80
20% discount for students, NSFs and seniors.
