Hamlet Vs Hamlet at Theatre National

Guy Cassiers and Tom Lanoye continue their fruitful collaboration and turn their attention to the "play of plays": Hamlet by Shakespeare. Guy Cassiers puts this adaptation on stage with nine actors from the Toneelhuis and the Toneelgroep Amsterdam.

For his adaptation of Hamlet, Tom Lanoye dives into the psychology of adolescence. This "greenhorn" Hamlet feels crushed by the world of adults. And that is how a character who wavers between self-hatred and presumption, between self-deprecation and disgust for the "impure" world, is born. Hamlet's tormented monologues are both a cry from the heart and exorcism, indictment and invocation. Hamlet is not only caught in the toils of madness, but also of the theatricality of his presence on stage. Thus he is a human like any one of us: thoughtless, complex, ambivalent. In the pursuit of his ambitions and the struggle against his anxieties, he finds himself face to face: Hamlet vs Hamlet.