Hamlet

Hamlet is the tragedy of intimacy colliding head-on with the outside world. It is the advent of the individual who realizes that he is a mystery to himself. In the current context of accelerating digital change, the questions he raises about the relation to the self and the fixity of identity are particularly topical. 

In Christophe Sermet’s theatre, there is no need for conceptual rereadings or fragmented transpositions to anchor the classics in a fertile reflection on our times. His vision of Hamlet sticks to the original plot: it is the story of the Prince of Denmark who returns home to avenge his father and who finds in acting and in (feigning) madness an unexpected space for revelations. Sermet approaches Hamlet like a textual archaeologist delving into old and not-so-old translations of the landmark play, finding here an eloquent sound, there a lively movement, and here again a surprising perspective. He translates all these impulses into a language that is as exuberant as it is direct and frontal: a raw pleasure for the performers.

In this staging, which is rather wary of too much grandiloquence, Hamlet returns to the dysfunctional fold to avenge his father only to find a floating Denmark, a kind of island adrift. A space detached from the mainland, where people live in isolation, watching each other. An island you can only escape by throwing yourself into the ocean, into nothingness, into death. 

On this piece of land, fiction and theatre serve as a mirror and an eye-opener for the Prince of Denmark. Christophe Sermet accentuates meta-theatricality to question the function of theatre and art in a world of glorified extimacy. Is the stage still the best vehicle for intimacy? 

Première
Création Studio Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles