‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King,’ Hamlet famously says – just as you think you’ve reached the interval, only to realise you have another forty minutes left. But in Hamstrung, it’s the King’s jester who is ensnared.
At Downstairs at The Glitch, a new venue from Vault Creative Arts – the team behind the much-missed Vault Festival – a single stool sits on a bare stage, surrounded by apples and loose manuscript pages. An envelope sits on the stool, with a large label that reads: ‘The lights will go down and a member of the audience will read this letter.’
When the lights do go down, there is barely time for an awkward pause before one spectator gamely creeps forward and reads the letter, inadvertently conjuring Yorick himself – the clown prince of Denmark – for an hour of jokes, jigs, and heartbreak.
Hamstrung is that most dependable staple of theatrical productions: a one-man show. But performer and writer George Rennie expands his limited cast by enlisting the audience from the outset. Yorick periodically coaxes audience members on stage to entertain the room while he flits through a side door to Elsinore, before returning to tell the audience what’s happening in Hamlet and reminiscing about his own past as a jester and actor. At one stage, two volunteers – including myself – are given the opportunity to perform in Yorick’s own play within a play. If this were a stand-up show, this would be the moment you’d expect to see a warning not to sit in the front row. But this is an intimate venue with few rows to choose from, and Rennie is encouraging and inclusive in his interactions. Everyone laughs together throughout, and an audience of strangers ends up leaving as friends.
While the Elsinore updates fleetingly recall Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Yorick is of course notable for appearing in just one scene of Hamlet – and only part of him in that. Mistaken for the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Yorick spends much of the show convinced he is quoting from The Murder of Gonzago as a private joke with his old friend, ‘my Hamlet’. Anyone who knows Hamlet – and it’s clear that most of the audience at tonight’s performance do – will enjoy these details, as well as the fact that Yorick’s most notorious ‘prop’ turns out to be a goat called Fortinbras.
It emerges that Yorick’s own past is tied in with the troupe of players from Hamlet, and in particular the Player King, lending insight to another of the play’s peripheral figures. This touching romance adds a tender element to the plot – a further contrast with the tragedy of Elsinore and the comedy of Yorick’s own routines.
Under Lisa Millar’s direction, Rennie’s script and performance flow well, and the jumps from comedy to tragedy to quiet romance never feel jarring. Benedict Esdale and Harry Faulkner’s lighting is minimalist but matches the atmosphere for each section of the performance, from ghost stories to audience participation, and creates some superbly unsettling moments in combination with Lucas Button’s sound design.
George Rennie has worked hard on this highly crafted and – as emerges at the end – deeply personal show about the nature of performance and the characters who don’t always get to be centre stage. It is by turns hilarious, moving, and thought-provoking – but always highly entertaining.
Hamstrung is playing at Downstairs at The Glitch until 16 June.
For more information and future show dates visit georgemrennie.co.uk
Words by Andrew Lawston
Photos by Beatrice Updegraff
