“Viesturs Kairis’ groundbreaking interpretation of “Hamlet” with political undertones and a dialogue with Russian-speaking audiences”

To tell “Hamlet” (to tell the truth, it’s not exactly Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” anymore – the play’s stage text was adapted to the director’s wishes by Roman Dolžanskis) as a story about a strange kingdom, where it seems that everyone already understands that something has gone wrong, something is constantly blowing , a fly buzzes obsessively in the air, but someone could change it only if they managed to take a place on the throne. So there is a quiet but desperate struggle for power, the pretenders to the throne poison each other, lose time in intrigues, while the troops of the conqueror of Fortinbras knock at the gate.

This is truly an amazing interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What comes to mind when you think of Shakespeare? I think for many it is the graveyard scene: Hamlet with the skull, the famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy. In this show, Hamlet is played by the great Maksim Bussel, his portrait is on the show’s poster and in the program, but in my opinion, Hamlet is no longer the main character of the show with his problems, as another director Olģerts Crowder – a young man who read too many books – once described it.

This “Hamlet” is about something else, and Aleksandrs Malikov plays an excellent role in the interpretation of Kairis’ “Hamlet”. He plays a character whose name we usually don’t remember at all after reading the play. He is the murderer of Hamlet’s father, the current husband of Hamlet’s mother, and a pretender to the throne. Claudius, adapted by Roman Dolžanskis as Klavdina, at the same time indicating that the action takes place no longer in Denmark, but in a Russian-speaking country. The hint might not have been there, because Klavdin is even made visually similar to the current Tsar Putin of Russia. I said before that Shakespeare’s Claudius is insignificant. And that is the genius of the character played by Alexander Malikov. He plays an insignificant, inconspicuous, small man who likes to fraternize with the common people. His clothes are unobtrusive, but extremely expensive, and the attitude of those around him shows that it is he who has complete control over what happens in the royal palace. This control is achieved just as imperceptibly: in the court, people tend to disappear without a trace, die of unexplained diseases, the only evidence of their existence is the blood, which in the scenography created by Ieva Jurjānes, literally seeps through the cardboard walls, flowing down effectively. The walls are momentarily repainted by servants moving in military pattern, conversations are constantly overheard. What excites me about this interpretation of “Hamlet” is that Shakespeare’s play really has it all. Both the struggle for power, the entry of Fortinbras’s men, and the court environment in which a thinking person – like Hamlet or Ophelia – cannot live. But maybe right now the time is such that suddenly these pre-given conditions that remained in the background have come to the fore, and Kairiš as a director has noticed it brilliantly.

The true intrigue of the performance, which was impossible to predict in advance: how such an interpretation of modern Russia will be received by the audience loyal to Chekhov’s theater. The fact that several extra performances of “Hamlet” have been included in the theater’s repertoire at the request of the audience attests to the success of Kairis’ intended dialogue with the Russian-speaking audience, and it also has a significant social significance.

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