Review: REMEMBER ME: HOMAGE TO HAMLET, The Coronet Theatre

After the female-led kick-off, the Italian Theatre Festival at The Coronet centres the attention on the United Kingdom's favourite writer, Shakespeare. Fabrizio Gifuni dissects and disassembles Hamlet in an intimate examination of the character through voice and sound.

With a fascinating soundscape created live on stage by G.U.P. Alcaro, Gifuni transforms the tale of betrayal in a one-man-show where physicality and identity become the main leitmotif. Playing with Italian and English, he focuses the original material on family relationships, ridding it from all excesses and experimenting with the different characters freely.

He takes the fragments and pieces them together liberally, taking on all the roles with slight inflections and timbre. It's certainly an impressive task for Gifuni, who started his Hamletian journey in the 90s and has kept revisiting the Prince ever since.

Alcaro's contribution to the performance is essential to its result. He transports the actor and the audience on the expedition, taking them through a melodic adventure of synthetic and authentic sounds alike. By mixing them in the same square measured with white tape onto the black stage, he plays into the dramatic instance creating a game between reality and pretence.

This deconstructed version of Hamlet might be cut a tad too short but shifts the lights on a beloved character altogether. Hamlet's emotional sphere is, as usual, haunted by his own personal ghosts but becomes, as presented by Gifuni, a curious exploration on sensory levels besides cementing a phenomenal achievement by the actor.