Exploring the greatest new and classic plays

SUPPORT OUR PODCAST BY BECOMING A PATRON
CLICK HERE

Greg Hersov

Greg Hersov

Greg Hersov

Greg Hersov was the Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 1987 to 2014, where he directed more than 50 productions, including plays by Wilde, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Miller, T Williams, Pinter, Mamet, Baldwin, Cartwright, and many more. He has worked with a stellar list of acting talent including Liam Neeson, Bernard Hill, Brenda Blethyn, John Thaw, Kenneth Cranham, Lesley Sharp, Helen McCrory, Adrian Scarborough, David Tennant, Claire Skinner, and Cush Jumbo to name but a few. His Shakespeare productions include Romeo and Juliet with Michael Sheen, King Lear with Tom Courtenay, The Tempest with Pete Postlethwaite, and As You Like It with Cush Jumbo. Greg has also been a Trustee of the Talawa Theatre Company.

Recommended Play(s)

Greg recommended Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin.

 

 

036 – Hamlet by William Shakespeare

036 – Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Cush Jumbo at the Young Vic 2021
Photo: Helen Murray

036 – Hamlet by William Shakespeare

It is arguably the world’s most famous play. The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark contains all of the elements of great drama: a revenge thriller, a family ripped apart, a tragic love story, political ambition and intrigue, and wondrous poetry and philosophical insights, but most of all a uniquely intelligent, vibrant and sympathetic title character who we see in all his brilliance and frailty. Hamlet’s assignment to avenge his father’s murder wears heavily on his young shoulders, already pressed down by grief and his mother’s o’er hasty marriage. His dangerous and solitary commission is bedevilled by his own moral scruples and his fragile mental stability, and though we know that it cannot go well, we are with him every step of his intense journey.

It is believed that Shakespeare started writing the play in 1599, a miraculously productive year in his career when the Globe theatre was built, and he had already penned Henry V, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar. As the century and Queen Elizabeth’s reign were drawing to an end, the play may have reflected some of the anxiety of the time about the future and the succession in particular. If drama is supposed to be “the abstract and brief chronicles of the time”, as Hamlet councils the travelling players, how does it now “hold a mirror up to” our age?

As we record this episode a new production is on stage at the Young Vic theatre in London, with renowned actress Cush Jumbo winning huge acclaim for her androgynous performance in the eponymous role. I am delighted to be joined in the task of attempting to survey the Everest of plays that is Hamlet, by the director of this production, Greg Hersov. Greg was previously the Artistic Director of the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre for 27 years, and the CV of plays he directed there reads like the dream catalogue for The Play Podcast, with countless classic titles old and new, including at least four Shakespeare plays. In Manchester he also forged a very successful partnership with his current Hamlet, previously directing Cush Jumbo in the lead roles in As You Like It, Pygmalion and A Doll’s House.

Note: Given the sheer length and depth of this mountain of a play, about which more has been written than any other in the history of drama, this episode is longer than our usual one hour. The play as published is never performed in full, as it would run to well over four hours, so every director must edit the text for their production. Likewise Greg and I could have talked for much longer, but edited our conversation down to this our best concise version of the play.

Hamlet at the Young Vic runs until 13th November 2021.

Greg Hersov

Greg Hersov was the Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 1987 to 2014, where he directed more than 50 productions, including plays by Wilde, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Miller, T Williams, Pinter, Mamet, Baldwin, Cartwright, and many more. He has worked with a stellar list of acting talent including Liam Neeson, Bernard Hill, Brenda Blethyn, John Thaw, Kenneth Cranham, Lesley Sharp, Helen McCrory, Adrian Scarborough, David Tennant, Claire Skinner, and Cush Jumbo to name but a few. His Shakespeare productions include Romeo and Juliet with Michael Sheen, King Lear with Tom Courtenay, The Tempest with Pete Postlethwaite, and As You Like It with Cush Jumbo. Greg has also been a Trustee of the Talawa Theatre Company.

Recommended Play

Greg recommended Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin

Photo © Marc Brenner
We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Hamlet include further thoughts on the nature of Hamlet’s ‘madness’, why the flawed hero retains our sympathy throughout the play despite some aspects of his behaviour, and how we can draw a credible psychological path for Ophelia’s descent.

Patreon Page

BECOME A PATRON!

Since I launched The Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to eschew any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I therefore invite you to help me to continue to make the podcast by becoming a Patron.
Additional benefits available to Patrons include Footnotes on the plays covered in the podcast, as well as exclusive access to The Play Review.

For details click here

Thank you very much for listening and for your support.
Douglas

The Texts
If you are interested in buying the play text or other related books, we’d be delighted if you choose to purchase them by following the links below. We will earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. Through our selected partners Bookshop.org and Blackwell’s you will also be supporting independent bookshops. Thank you.
You might also be interested in …
063 – Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel

063 – Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel

Brian Friel’s magical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa is set at the time of the harvest festival in rural Ireland in 1936. It’s account of the events of that summer in the house of the five unmarried Mundy sisters is filtered many years later through the memory of Michael, the son of the youngest sister. His memory is undoubtedly unreliable, but it is also funny, poetic and profoundly poignant.

Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.

062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward

062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward

Noël Coward’s play Private Lives is both a dazzling dramatic comedy and an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite of the Jazz Age. Coward himself starred in the premiere production in both London and New York in 1930, the critics acclaiming the show’s construction and wit, but predicting that it would not last. As a new production opens at the Donmar theatre in London, I ask Coward’s newest biographer, Oliver Soden, why the play has aged so well.

061 – Sea Creatures, by Cordelia Lynn

061 – Sea Creatures, by Cordelia Lynn

Cordelia Lynn’s play Sea Creatures is a poetic exploration of loss and grief, its setting betwixt the sea and shore rich in metaphoric resonances. As we record this episode, Sea Creatures is playing at the Hampstead Theatre in London in a spellbinding production directed by James Macdonald.

I am delighted to be joined by playwright Cordelia Lynn to talk about her fascinating new play.