In the dark among the mirrors

The NET festival opened with Hamlet by Oskars Korsunovas

The most impatient Moscow theatergoers, who went to the Baltic House festival a month ago, have already seen the premieres of two main Lithuanian directors - “The Idiot” by Nekrosius and “Hamlet” by Korsunovas. Those who waited in Moscow had a difficult time: two festivals taking place simultaneously in the capital brought the Lithuanians at the same time and staged their show on the same day. But since the NET festival brought “Hamlet” for only one performance, the theater audience first of all went to Korshunovas and postponed Nyakrosius, whom Stanislavski’s Season planned to play three times.

Korshunovas' main conceptual and staging move circles around the actor's makeup table on wheels - with a dressing table and a strip of fluorescent lamps on top. Nine performers sit in a row across from nine tables before the performance even begins. The actors in black against the background of black velvet of the stage almost disappear in the semi-darkness - we see only the outline of their backs and illuminated faces reflected in the mirrors. The performance begins with everyone, first in a whisper, then louder in different ways, asking their reflection: “Who are you?” - then this question will be echoed in the question of the guards to the invisible ghost.

The actors' table carries with it two themes: firstly, the theme of the theater, which cannot be called original for Shakespeare's productions, but which nevertheless sometimes takes unexpected turns here. For example, in the story with Ophelia, who is played by one of the best actresses of Korsunovas, his red-haired baby Juliet is Rasa Samuolite. She turns out to be a girl obsessed with the theater and her acting, always pretending to be something, and a scene of madness, similar to a continuation of the same acting, takes place among vases full of white flowers, as if in a prima’s dressing room, filled with bouquets. And the dazzling lamps above the dressing table draw lines in the darkness, reminiscent of a ramp. The second theme is related to mirrors, which provide an opportunity for very simple but effective techniques based on reflections, doublings, endless multiplications and, conversely, instant disappearances of heroes and parts of their bodies. It also offers scope for reading into all these manipulations various meanings associated with the looking glass, doubleness, werewolves and all the overtones of the plot “Who does the actor see in the mirror before going on stage.”

Korshunovas uses his mirror capabilities to the fullest: everything doubles and breaks into fragments. The ghost of the father rides onto the stage lying on the tables put together, like a half-naked corpse in a dead room under crackling fluorescent lamps. From that moment on, Dainius Gavenonis with a bare torso will represent his father, and dressed in a coat - Claudius. And in the scene of Hamlet with his mother, Gavenonis will stand between the mirrors, throwing his coat off one shoulder, and will be seen in different reflections as both killed and murderer. The same Claudius at prayer, standing behind the mirror so that only the illuminated head and hands of his outstretched hands are visible, will begin to seem like some kind of terrible flying head, and his hands, doubled by reflections, will look like birds hanging in the void. And so on.

A dark performance, full of electric crackles and hums, briefly showing faces and hands from the blackness, looks impressive, meaningful, but fragmented and unclear. The play has been heavily re-edited, but it’s hard to understand why. Why are they talking about Ophelia’s death when she never thought of dying, and about sending Hamlet to England when she is far away? Who is this character with a giant rat head wandering among the heroes? You can continue to ask questions. The roles are planned: sexy Gertrude (Nee Savichenko), the not too attentive, youthful mother of an adult son who does not allow her to enjoy late passion; child-loving busybody Polonius (Vaidotas Martinaitis), affectionately reading instructions to his daughter while he irons her dress. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Tomas Zajbus and Giedrius Savickas) are campy drag queens in cocktail dresses; hoodie-wearing hunk Horatio (Julius Žalakyavičius) with his true tomboyish friendship. And, finally, Hamlet himself (Darius Meskauskas) is a man from the crowd, not too young and not at all charming, with a swollen, unsmiling face. Each of the heroes can be accepted as such, or as another, but it is still impossible to understand what exactly Oskaras Korsunovas staged the “play of plays” about. Yes, actors play roles, they whiten their faces and begin to speak on behalf of others, and then they erase the makeup again and see themselves in the mirrors. This plot surprises every time, but in Korshunovas’s performance it was shattered by effects and painful gravitas, even if the director spoke in the program about the opportunity to “open the door to your own Elsinore - in search of Hamlet’s theater, which turns out to be a trap for our inner reality.”

Dina GODER