Review: GERTRUDE - THE CRY, Theatre N16, June 14 2016

When the programme tells you that the playwright, Howard Barker, considers his greatest achievement to be "...earning worldwide status without compromising his principles", you know you're going to be in for a full-on two hours of well, uncompromising, stuff. And so it proves in Chris Hislop's production of Gertrude - The Cry (at Theatre N16 until 30 June).

It starts with Gertrude badgering her lover Claudius to kill her husband, King Hamlet, and he, bewitched by the Queen, does so with his hands while other parts of his anatomy are otherwise engaged. And so begins the familiar tale of the Prince of Denmark, this time from Gertrude's point of view, with the Prince only appearing intermittently to say how much he hates his mother and uncle and how he can't really believe in love.

Maybe so, young Hamlet, but can he believe in love's devilish cousin, lust, the over-riding motivation for everything that happens in this controversial play. Gertrude's long legs and (we are told more than once) 34-year-old body is enough to send men to madness (she transfixes Hamlet's teenage friend the Duke of Meklenberg too), though, apart from these physical allures, it's hard to see exactly why, as the sexpot stuff usually wears a bit thin after a while and there's not a lot to Gertrude beyond that.

The play demands committed performances and this production gets them from its ensemble cast. Izabella Urbanowicz, coquettishly peeping from behind her widow's veil or gathering up the testosterone that floods her life beneath her satin gowns, commands the attention of everyone, actors and audience, in this tiny space, intensifying the claustrophobia of the court. She gets good support from Alexander Hulme as Claudius, a man in thrall to his libido and Liza Keast as Isola, mother of Claudius and no blushing violet herself. There's a fine cameo from LJ Reeves as Raguso, whose innocent view of romantic love is soon overturned by the court's more base instincts.

Though there are a few laughs, in the main, it's all played straight with Sigmund Freud's influence on events the most evident. Ideas of female sexual desire and power bubble up in the text and motherhood gets a rough ride too - there's a lot to be thinking about as the two hour interval-free production ploughs on. Though everyone is pretty much dialed up to ten throughout, there's not too much shouting, but I'm sure some of the more emotional scenes were heard in Tooting! The Cry indeed!

Of course, it had to be done straight - just one raised eyebrow and the whole thing would turn into a kind of Carry On Hamlet. Now there's a thought...

Photo Roy Tan

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