SUZY EDDIE IZZARD: HAMLET

Hamlet, along perhaps with Lear, is the role that so many actors see as career defining. It is a role that many will take on, despite being rather too long in the tooth to play the young Prince of Denmark, but play it they will. And it is the Shakespeare play that is perhaps the best known, the one that having seen it gives license to say that you have done the bard, whether you like it or not.

I have seen it many many times, I have loved it and I have really hated it. Productions with such power and clarity and others where directors have let rip with weird concepts, silliness and on occasions frankly, real stupidity!

Last night I witnessed a production that breathed fresh life into the play. Izzard delivers each role and each line in a rapid fire production where she takes on each and every part with such understanding and clarity. Shifting between each with ease, both physically and vocally but never once resorting to cliche. Yes, there was comedy, Polonius was delightfully shrill and mannered and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reduced symbolically to whispering glove puppets, but Ophelia is delicate and fragile whilst the grave diggers blissfully a classic comedy double act.

As for the prince Izzard brings so much to the role, despite as she says, being 64 years old and a trans woman. Gender matters not here, whether Claudius or Gertrude, this is acting at its very pinnacle.

It is as if Izzard is manifesting the whole as Shakespeare is creating them internally, in his head, before finally committing them to paper. She brings energy and freshness to the piece in a solo performance at Brighton Open Air Theatre where a sold out and utterly rapt audience where mesmerised and, save for laughter in the comic moments, totally silent, you could have heard a leaf fall.

And now Suzy embarks on an epic world tour with this startling production which will for so many reason shake things up. Rightly so, Suzy or Eddie has never taken the easy routes, whether performing in foreign languages or as Hollywood villains, even completing physical challenges that would scare olympians… this is the stuff that truly defines a performer as legendary.

When not selected as a local parliamentary candidate here in Brighton we could say that was our, and Westminster’s loss, but surely it was also our, and theatre’s, gain!

In a post note, one has to hope that this huge sell out audience, many no doubt drawn to BOAT for the first time by the lure of seeing this incredible international star, will now return to enjoy and support the great asset that BOAT is for our city.

Andrew Kay

16 September

Brighton Open Air Theatre

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