Boris Nikitin’s radical rework of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Grahamstown and at ICA, Cape Town
In Hamlet, author and director Boris Nikitin rewrites the most famous of all theatre pieces and transforms it into a contemporary performance. In a mix of experimental documentary play and music-theatre the enigmatic performer and electronic musician Julia*n Meding takes over the part of a contemporary Hamlet who revolts against reality. Supported by a baroque-quartet, Meding takes himself to a tour de force on stage by introducing and exposing himself to the public. Meding, giving details from his life story, revolts against the audience, like Hamlet against his royal court he attacks the public, agitates, flirts with them, mocks them and tries to seduce them.
Time and again he seizes the microphone, he starts to sing: raw electropunk, sketchy cover songs, a ballad. Words, sung as fragments of emotions.
Meding’s/Hamlet’s performance dazzles between offensive dilettantism and vain jokes, exaggerated gestures and confrontational pose. Is this Meding? Or Hamlet? Is he serious? Or is it all a game? “Is he or isn‘t he”? Is he not both at the same time, eventually?
The performance crossfades documentary and fiction into a contemporary version of Hamlet in which the conflict zones illusion and reality, individual and society, interplay. Hamlet is poetic insurrection: raw, coarse, confrontational, anti-social, dazzling.
Credits
Concept, Text, Director: Boris Nikitin
Performance, Text: Julia*n Meding
Baroque ensemble: Led by Sarah Evans
Stage Design, Costumes: Nadia Fistarol
Video: Georg Lendorff, Elvira Isenring, Boris Nikitin
Songs: Uzrukki Schmidt
Music: Der musikalische Garten, Boris Nikitin, Julia*n Meding, Matthias Meppelink
Sound: Matthias Meppelink
Technical Supervision, Light: Benjamin Hauser
Production Superviser: Annett Hardegen
Supported by: Fachausschuss Theater und Tanz BS/BL, Pro Helvetia the Swiss Arts Council, Ernst Göhner, Migros Kulturprozent, Kunststiftung NRW
Co-comissioned by: Kaserne Basel, Gessnerallee, Thêatre Vidy, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr
With the support of: La Villette Paris, Münchner Kammerspiele, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Onassis Centre Athen
