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SYMPHONY OF THE HANDIES Richard Burton puts on quite the show in Hamlet. He’s confident, strident, energetic, he soars, bellows, gets laughs—he does everything you’ve come to expect from him. But is he a great prince? Probably not; celebrity has a way of obliterating the intentions of making art. Because Burton was riding a tsunami over his infamous affair with Elizabeth Taylor, and during the same year was giving movie audiences the chance to look him over in Becket and The Night of the Iguana, we tended to respond to the personality more than the actor and, unfortunately, he was too rarely the latter. Hamlet has been and will be played just about any way you’d care to play it, but perhaps the miscalculation here is Burton is proving he can do something respectable, and live, to tower above the hoopla of all the media attention. But there are echoes of his previous and future performances throughout, which suggest his voice and mechanisms are too easily relied upon—a symphony of the handies. And he occasionally screams to the point of slurring. As if to exempt a lack of character consistency in Burton’s growing boredom during the long-run, director Sir John Gielgud provided this copy, “No actor has ever played Hamlet…one is always changing one’s performance…it is a permanent rehearsal.” To support the intrigue, the play is stripped of ornamental trappings, so as to absorb “the beauty of the language.” The troube is, you’re distracted from its “beauty” because of a near-fatal decision—something called Electronovision was used to record this production at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Described as the “new electronic miracle process”—a cheapie b & w multiple camera system—it didn’t give you the theatre experience, it gave you a headache, what with its blurry imagery, inadequate lighting and uneven sound. Still, it’s a filmed record of Burton as Hamlet and that ain’t nothing. (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would become his real/reel Hamlet.) With Eileen Herlie as Gertrude, a few light years away from Myrtle Fargate; Alfred Drake as Claudius; Hume Cronyn very satisfied with himself as Polonius; Linda Marsh as Ophelia; Barnard Hughes as Marcellus and the Priest; John Cullum as Laertes; Sir John’s voice as the Ghost. Though available on DVD, the presentation was never meant to be seen again after the two-day-only showing in September, 1964. Burton’s widow discovered a stored-away print and found a legal means to release it despite a contract stipulation requiring all prints be destroyed. Initially distributed by Warner Bros, the two-day four-performance run was a phenomenal success—selling over 5 million tickets, hauling in more than $10 million.
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |
