Performances

Question 1

Michael Sheen

Answer 1

He plays all of the characters, set in a psychiatric facility, Emma Smith brought attention to how this emphasises the connection between Hamlet and his father

Question 2

Robert Icke, 2018 (Andrew Scott)

Answer 2

Removes elements of secrecy (has Hamlet there for pretty much everything, and he knows that Claudius isn’t praying), explicit past relationship O+H, draws on sexualised themes (Freud)

Question 3

Olivier

Answer 3

Played Hamlet totally sane, emphasis on Freud stuff

Question 4

Kenneth Brannagh

Answer 4

Played Hamlet as sane

Question 5

Matthew Warchus’s 1997 production

Answer 5

Ophelia dispenses pills, not flowers when she enters ‘distracted’ - reflects the twentieth-century tendency to present Ophelia as a study of mental pathology

Question 6

Derek Jacobi, 1988

Answer 6

on “Go bid the soldiers shoot”, Fortinbras’ guard shoots dead Horatio and the other surviving members of the Danish court

Question 7

Richard Eyre, 1980

Answer 7

Ghost doesn’t appear onstage, Hamlet says his lines as if possessed by a poltergeist