From the King (Blog #9)October 17th 2007 |
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POGUE HAMLET BLOG #9
October 17, 2007
Despite several rough days of tech and not having run the show for a few days, I awoke with a calm serenity that has eluded me for the past several weeks. I ran my lines three times during the day (once in the bath, once re-enacting my blocking in the living-room, and once in the car enroute to the theatre) and several of my more troublesome scenes and big speeches many more times. They were there…no groping, no struggling, I felt bits of business and devices were solidifying both in my mind and in practice.
Ah well…The run-through was not bad (it was illuminating just to be able to run the whole thing), but not great. My fear about seeing myself projected on a big screen during my opening speech came to naught, because where I perform it, deep in the vom, the screen will be blocked by seats and audience, thus me will not be seen by me. A relief.
But I’m sure my colleagues in the local theatre community will regard this scene as poetic justice for Pogue. It is no secret that I despise the abundant dependency of body mics (especially head mics) in the theatre in recent years. I’m from the old school of “you must project and hit the back wall of the theatre.” Well, while I’m not reduced to wearing a body mic, my opening scene, given essentially off-stage and projected into the theatre, is played as a press conference for Claudius. Hence there is a “camera-woman” photographing me as I speak before a live stand-up mic. So it is all in the context of the scene. And I hasten to add that all of the remainder Pogue’s scenes are his natural speaking voice under its own steam, unenhanced by any artificial means.
Other things that occurred last night: the Laertes-Claudius plotting scene (one of those troublesome scenes I had run throughout the day…and I knew) foundered purely on flubbed lines once more…and Rick eighty-sixed two of my little costume/character touches of which I was growing quite fond. I’ve known since the beginning that he was not totally convinced of their workability and that they were existing only on a trial basis. But I hoped he was beginning to see what I saw in them.
The first was a pearl drop earring that I wore in my left ear (the sinistra ear). I thought it would bring a touch of fanciful colour to our austere production and also connect to Hamlet’s Elizabethan origins. How many portraits have we seen of the famous men of the day with just such an emblem in their ear: Shakespeare, Leicester, Raleigh, Essex, Southampton, the Earl of Oxford (to some, the real Shakespeare)? It appealed to the writer in me…a device carried through and paid off at the end…in this case, I used it as the poison pearl he drops in the cup he offers Hamlet and that Gertrude drinks from.
My second little touch that got the axe was what I can only call my “aroma hankie”. Midway through rehearsals, Rick and I broached the subject of Claudius’ drinking. Despite Hamlet’s rants about the “bloat king”, etc, all the lines about the roistering court had been pretty much cut and I don’t recall any truly alcoholic Claudiuses in the several films and stage versions I seen.
Rick suggested, as an alternative to the wine-cup, Claudius was perhaps popping pills. This was problematic in two ways. Number one, I wear gloves…so, grabbing pill boxes from pockets, trying to open them, and grabbing pills (and possibly spilling them all over the stage), as well as gulping them and continuing to talk was simply an impossibility.
Number two, Claudius’ demon is his guilt; not alcohol, not drugs. I didn’t want to read in a review: “And Claudius was a drug addict.” If in any past productions, Claudius prowls the stage with a wine-cup clutched in his fist, I think he drinks to assuage his guilt. I felt any drug thing should be for the same reason. Any drinking, any drug use is not what motivated him to commit his murder; but is there only to soothe his guilt, his anxiety. As Rick suggested, it should be his Zoloft or Wellbutron, his anti-depressant. This got me thinking homeopathically and along the lines of aroma therapy.
I tried a vial. It didn’t really read when I pulled it from my pocket and sniffed from it. And the stopper and glove-encased fingers again gave the whole business a clumsiness. As Julieanne, the costumer, did not want a vial hanging off my chain of office, she suggested a small handkerchief slotted through the ring worn over my glove.
I immediately glommed onto this. The reddish handkerchief, like the earring, popped out against the austerity of the bleak setting and dark costumes. It was easy to use…a whip across the nose, a flash…in more agitated moments, a deep inhalation. And it just looked so damned bizarre…it became like Curley’s Vaseline-filled glove or Captain Queeg’s steel balls or Blofeld’s cat.
Again, it pleased to my writerly side…I love giving an audience an odd character quirk or touch that may confuse them at first and that they have to discover its reason as the play progresses. And as a writer, it appealed to my thematic sense. We talk of “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Claudius has lines: “O my offense is rank. It smells to heaven.” Claudius using a scented handkerchief to sooth the stench of his crime and finding that he cannot escape his own putridness really made it a nice motif for me.
Rick feared it might make Claudius too foppish. But I think Claudius has a touch of the dandy in him and I’m in no way playing him as a fop or silly. Oddly enough, ruminating on this last night, I remembered the movie ROB ROY (which despite BRAVEHEART being the Scottish movie the year it came out, ROB ROY was a much more interesting film) and the lethal fop Tim Roth played in that. Nothing silly about him at all.
But that is apropos of nothing. Maybe the earring and the hankie were like Olivier’s noses; maybe I have clung to them as a pathway to find a character (or maybe I’ve clung to them in lieu of one). Anyway, it was my job to convince Rick they would work; I apparently failed. That’s show biz!
More anon.
Charles Edward Pogue
“Claudius”
Mr. Pogue appears courtesy of Actor's Equity Association
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