MEDIATHEK

"In hamlet the attempt to understand to play overlaps with the attempt to understand reality; the world of the play and the real wordl of our thoughts meet in Hamlet. The attempt to grasp both one and the other takes place on one battlefield, as it were. Our understanding of the play must therefore remain the same as our understanding of the real world - subjective, human, often fragmentary and incomplete, and always commensurate with people." (Pavel Drábek). Shakespeare's Hamlet, in this demythicing approach by director Jan Mikulášek's, becames an oppressive family drama shut up in the space of a hermetically-sealed bourgois flat. The figure of Hamlet represent the general principle of doubting the acts that we have already performed, as well as of the thoughts that precede them. It forces us to realise once more to what extent we influence the lives of others, and what form of responsibility is necessary, and what responsibility we refuse out of lack of courage or sheer laziness. Jiří Vyorálekin the title role performs the well-known monologues with everyday diction, but manages to capture extremely intensively the force with which he resist his fate. "I see hamlet as an everyday figure, not an intellectual hero who knows how to deal with everything. Far from it - he is someone full of uncertainties and inner confusion. His intellect is more of a hindrance in dealing with the situation," Jan Mikulášek has said.

"Jiří Vyoralek's Hamlet is no pensive agoniser, but a properly angry young man, who, like Electra, longs for nothing else than revenge for the murder of his father. Hamlet's outbursts of anger are truly frightening, for example when he brutally drags Ophelia across a stage covered in dirt. Unable to get to her feet, she merely beats the ground in despair. Mikulášek's production is rich in details and "demythicising" shifts: Ophelia is not a charming young girl, but more of a pubescent brat who clearly finds it difficult to communicate with adults. Here pure heart is, however, demonstrated in poetic metaphor in a sequence where she plays the violin using a lily as a bow. (...) Goose on a String's Hamlet is the event of the theatre season. not only in Brno."
(by Vladimír Čech, Hospodářské noviny)

"The well-known story is rigorously translated into the present through the everyday costumes, the actors' matter-of-fact or ironic and affected intonations and gestures, their photo groups, the screen on stage and other things. This is not the present of the "big world," but the present of disintegrating family relationships (...) The most essential medium of Mikulášek's Hamlet is not so munch Urbánek's soberly matter-of-fact, depoetising translation, but above all the theatre language.
(by Vladimir Just, Literární noviny)

"Goose on a String's new Hamlet has nothing in common with the Fortinbras drumming storm of Scherhaufer's Shakespearomania. It is a devastating testimony to the nullity of man in the vortex of fate. Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Dirt, soil. We throw it on a coffin, or we can fling it into people's eyes instead of sand. The fruits of reason, leadership, but also dirt and mud."
(by J.P. Kříž, Právo)

Translation:
Zdeněk Urbánek

Assistant Director:
Martin Macháček

[JUM]

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17th International Festival Theatre Pilsen Booklet (Printed Edition)