The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane. Director Gavin Quinn, Designer Aedin Cosgrove, Costume and Prop Designer Sarah Bacon. Andrew Bennett, Derrick Devine, Conor Madden, Bashir Moukarzel, Gina Moxley, Daniel Reardon, Judith Roddy. With local players Kylie McCormack, Sue Tweg, Great Danes Absolute Dane My Gentleman (Santi), Monteral Full Circle (Gertie) and drama students from the Trinity Grammar School, Kew Tim Dennett, Fred Hiskens, William Lodge, Alex Hatzikostas, Thomas Little, Andrew Kondopoulos, Liam McCopping, Atticus Lyon and Nick Wood. Pan Pan Theatre (Ireland) presented by Arts Projects Australia and the Melbourne Festival. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne. Until Saturday 22 October.
“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
“Remember you must die.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
The Irish make theatre (in the truest sense of the term) like no-one else. The opening night of Brian Friels’ Dancing at Lughnasa on London’s Westend (where it had transferred from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre), remains the theatrical highlight of my life. But this Pan Pan Theatre production of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane certainly gives it a run for its money – constantly nudging at the limits of theatricality with a rare and breathtaking curiosity performed with exacting stagecraft and the unequalled Irish passion for words and language; the definitive story.
And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
Partly an anarchic vivisection of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a robust behind-the-scenes tragicomedy as three ideal ‘Hamlets’ audition for the leading role, and literally littered with illuminating intertextual juxtapositions (Samuel Beckett is superbly represented by the post-apocalyptic Endgame), The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane is a theatrical construct of unique, fiercely original mind-fuckery of the highest order.
As much as it defies (and denies) labels, The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane invites absolute scrutiny on a great number of psychologically compelling levels. It also, both relievedly and delightfully, plays with the extent to which it is enamoured with its own intellectual conceits: a monumental Pinteresque pause follows the first mention of “postdramatic” and, in a bravura moment, the Ghost walks – quite literally – out of the building.
The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane begins with an engaging prologue – a lecture on the stability of Shakespeare’s text among other things – from an academic (delivered with dry good humour by Sue Tweg). It’s a brilliant device – serving equally to lower, unsettle and provoke our expectations with particular insights: quoting Muriel Spark’s “problems you can solve, paradoxes you have to live with” leads into a fine thread on the objectification of the emotional needs of the women in Hamlet (radically deconstructed by an unforgettable mad scene later). A strangled rendition of “Greensleeves” on the recorder then catapults us into the audition process – overseen by the play’s director Mr Quinn and other production personnel.
The audition process is the perfect way to not only level the playing field but also raise the stakes – while robbing us of our ability, and need, to judge. The first act ends, however, with the audience being invited onto the stage to stand next to the Hamlet of our choice. Suddenly, the high-stakes quest for the role becomes something more like a community sporting match – and the damaged, eye-patch wearing Mr Madden is chosen (as he apparently often is).
And it’s not difficult to understand why. With his hapless recounting of his early days on stage and his poignant description of how he might have (somewhat gymnastically and over-enthusiastically) performed the role were he not so scarred (and scared), Mr Madden set himself up perfectly for the challenge: the dreamer, the procrastinator, the athlete and the provocateur … the ideal Hamlet.
The audience were then summarily dismissed so that the company could prepare for Act 2 – their performance of Hamlet. Standing outside the theatre, I couldn’t help wondering how on earth they would ‘bring us back’. Socialising, gossiping, laughing and smiling – we were at once both an audience united and an audience divided. I needn’t have been concerned. Upon re-entering the theatre, Aedin Cosgrove and Sarah Bacon’s design had transformed the space into a candlelit wonderland of divine theatrical order. Metal rubbish bins lined the stage (equal parts Beckett’s beloved chessboard and England’s orderly country garden) – before the ensemble took to the stage and delivered the “To be, or not be” monologue in a round. And I was, from that point on, hypnotised.
The company’s Hamlet is an expansive, jumbled, intertextual, anti-narrative tour de force of playful invention – topped by the arrival of the Trinity Grammar School Drama Students who perform the travelling players' ‘play within a play’ and the gravedigger scene like they’ve never been performed before. And just when it all appears to be skating along the edge of tongue-in-cheek, self-aware and joyful abandon, we are suddenly thrust into hell, when, having crawled out of a rubbish bin, a soaked Judith Roddy delivers a blistering, postmodern riff on Ophelia’s mad scene that is undeniably the dramatic highlight of a most brilliant and inspirational night at the theatre.
Pictured: Conor Madden in The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane
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