Opening on the 18th at the Seoul Arts Center… Points of note from the play ‘Hamlet’
When I first heard that director Shin Yoo-cheong was staging Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Hamlet’, I suddenly thought of the position of coach of the soccer team.
Coaching the Korean national soccer team is probably one of the most arduous jobs in the country. Everyone thinks they know best, so there is no one who doesn’t speak up. You have to do well to get your money’s worth, but if you mess up, you can easily become a traitor. Before I even see the ball, I get cut by all sorts of comments, and even after the game is over, I get slandered here and there.
Isn’t that what it feels like for a theater director to be in charge of ‘Hamlet’? I think everyone knows this story, regardless of age or gender. The world’s best directors and actors have created this stage with brilliant reinterpretations. Shakespeare’s longest play and most powerful tragedy. Sublime psalms, rich psychological descriptions, monologues like extensive tirade, and bloody battles of language reminiscent of mixed martial arts. I really want to try it someday, but it’s clear that unless it’s something new, it’ll be hard to hear good things about it.
Director Shin Yoo-cheong’s name is now a rare ‘guarantee check’ in the performing arts industry. ‘Scorched Love’, which reflects the horrors of the Lebanese civil war in the tragic family history of Greece, ‘The Wife’, which expands Ibsen across time zones, and ‘Angels in America’, which transfers the chaos of late-century America to 21st-century Seoul… . A director who can expect both box office success and content achievement by staging a play in a medium or large theater is rare, and both audiences and critics are waiting for his next work.
Shin Yu-cheong is putting Shakespeare on stage for the first time in his life, especially ‘Hamlet’. Even after nodding that the actor who will play Hamlet is Cho Seung-woo, questions remain. What on earth was he thinking when he volunteered for this cross?
◇Attention point ① The ‘treasure’ named Seungwoo Cho
Imagining Cho Seung-woo on stage was like imagining ‘treasure hidden in a field,’ to borrow an old metaphor. Cho Seung-woo has already proven himself well on the musical stage. So what about in theater? The power to sell out all performances at the 1,000-seat CJ Towol Theater with the opening of tickets for the play ‘Hamlet’ must have come from the audience’s expectations of imagining what color the ‘treasure’ that is Cho Seung-woo would shine. Even in musicals, Cho Seung-woo was suited for roles that required acting strength. The same was true for his role as a ‘ghost’ in the musical ‘Phantom of the Opera’, for which he won the Best Actor award at this year’s Korea Musical Awards. Although I have seen this work in many versions at home and abroad, it is no exaggeration to say that I only fully understood this story after seeing actor Cho Seung-woo play the role of a ghost.
If an actor on stage in a musical has a certain level of overcoming the limitations of a song, Cho Seung-woo is the actor closest to that level. The climax of this musical is the last opera, ‘The Triumph of Don Huan’. ‘Ghost’ Jo Seung-woo says ‘Tell me you love me, don’t leave me alone…’ ‘ When he sang, an aura of sorrow gushed out, pushing out the air, from his body, which covered his face with a hood to hide his expression. It is enough for Jo Seung-woo on stage to just be Jo Seung-woo. It will be the same on the theater stage as well.
Director Choi Dong-hoon of the movie ‘Tazza’ said, “To me, Cho Seung-woo was Brad Pitt and Al Pacino. “When he read the script and said he wanted to do a movie, it felt like I was going on a date with the girl I had a crush on.” Director Woo Min-ho of ‘Insiders’ said, “Even if I go on stage as a musical, I would like to do at least one movie a year. Isn’t it a treasure? “That performance should be left in the video archive,” he said.
‘Hamlet’ is perhaps a jewel that shines with its own color, sitting in the middle of the crown of Shakespeare’s play in the career of every male actor. Actor Cho Seung-woo willingly took on the role. What color will this gem shine?
◇Point of note② Stage master Lee Tae-seop’s ‘wisdom’
The stage of ‘Hamlet’ was performed by stage artist Lee Tae-seop, winner of the 2021 Lee Hae-rang Theater Award. This was also unexpected. This is because he has already created another stage for ‘Hamlet’, which ended in early September. Stage artist Lee Tae-seop’s clear stage embraced playwright Bae Sam-sik’s text as beautiful as a poem. The stage, surrounded on three sides by translucent partitions, sometimes reflected the backs of the characters speaking to the audience like a mirror. When lighting is used exquisitely, the space inside the partition becomes a corridor of the Gujung Palace where intrigue creeps in, or a blurry boundary between life and death where the ghosts of the dead pass by.
Director Shin Yoo-cheong said, “I met Lee Tae-seop, who designed the stage, many times, and he was really wise. “When I told him about a picture that even I couldn’t clearly understand, he listened carefully and made various new miniatures out of paper every time we met.”
Tae-seop Lee debuted in a play at the National Theater in 1990 and was responsible for over 200 stage works, including plays, dances, and operas, for 30 years. He already has a wealth of experience working with numerous directors. There are few people better than him at drawing out the director’s thoughts and expressing them visually. He met with Shin Yu-cheong more than 10 times and talked patiently, helping to make the picture of the stage, which had seemed vague and vague and in a fog, clear. What other surprises will the stage of Lee Tae-seop’s ‘Hamlet’ present?
◇Point of note③ ‘Hamlet’ discovered by director Shin Yu-cheong
A world that thinks it knows everything about ‘Hamlet’ will expect something clearer and newer. What kind of ‘Hamlet’ did director Shin Yoo-cheong discover? The first thing he noticed was the line “Don’t go back to Wittenberg,” which his uncle Claudius and mother Gertrude repeat three times to Hamlet in the play.
Through the Renaissance, the concepts of ‘self’ and ‘individual’ grew among humans who were beings in a community following God’s will. The Bible was translated into languages other than Latin, and even Shakespeare read the English Protestants’ ‘Geneva Bible’. And in 1517, Luther hung his 95 Theses on the main gate of the University Church in Wittenberg. It was the beginning of the religious reformation. Shakespeare wrote ‘Hamlet’ between 1599 and 1601. If Wittenberg is a place where a break with the old era was declared, the words ‘don’t go there’ become an order to ‘stay within the old order and not be swept away by the fuss that a new era has arrived.’ Director Shin Yoo-cheong said, “‘Hamlet’ begins right there.”
“I have already seen the New Age, but my father, who sent me to Wittenberg to see the New Age, has been murdered. But the monster called my father’s younger brother casually married my mother, took the throne that should have been mine, and reorganized the order of the world around him, and everyone followed him without objection. Hamlet must have thought so. ‘What on earth is this?’” Shin Yu-cheong said, “The moment I first interpreted it this way, I felt like I had just entered that era again. People at the time would have understood right away when Wittenberg was emphasized three times. “It must have been a work that stirred contemporaneity and timeliness.”
As the times went by, those with secular and religious authority constantly defined what constituted a sin, threatened people with it, shackled them with fear, and made economic profits by selling indulgences. However, people were now realizing that they could read the Bible in their own language and free themselves from sin with their own hearts and consciences, not through any organization or authority. The world is changing that way, but the people living in Hamlet’s Elsinore Castle do not think deeply about the old order and take it for granted. If you look at it from a different perspective and say that this is wrong, you become an ‘ugly duckling.’ The loneliness and alienation, increased self-consciousness, and doubts about what was previously believed to be correct are added. This is the starting point of the growing sense of asking Hamlet, ‘What’s wrong?’
The aura of the proper noun Hamlet is stronger and bigger than any other character created by the world. Interpretations of ‘Hamlet’ were also divided. Director Shin Yoo-cheong’s ‘Hamlet’ is not a son blinded by his father’s revenge, a moralist who is angry at infidelity and extramarital affairs, or a mentally ill person suffering from trauma and paranoia. His Hamlet is a human being who is at odds with the old order and is trying to break through the old world. “Human gestures and efforts to advance one step further, gradually breaking through the cycle and repetition after being trapped and stuck in the framework of custom and the old order, feel great to me. “Isn’t this a universal task given to all humans?”
Director Shin Yoo-cheong laughed, saying, “When I was thinking about Hamlet for a while, I met Jin-chaek Son, who had recently directed ‘Hamlet,’ at an awards ceremony. I wanted to grab his hand and say, ‘Please save me.’” “Humans are always trapped in the regrets of yesterday, and live in anticipation of tomorrow, moving forward steadily. I hope ‘Hamlet’ becomes a performance that asks clear questions to the audience. ‘Ah, this is Hamlet. ‘It’s so easy.’ Finding answers to what human life is is difficult, and living with those questions can still be long and tedious, but even so.”
[이태훈 기자]
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