The week after I quit my job, I spent three nights in a row watching my favourite band play live, got a bunch of new tattoos and then jumped on a flight to Vienna, to watch a production of Hamlet at the Burgtheater Court Theater - the national theatre of Austria.
I stayed in a hostel within walking distance from the theatre; a pleasant place and I managed to sneak a free dinner there.
Homelessness had driven me into hostels out of necessity for much of the beginning of 2024, and there was something genuinely nice about, now, being in one out of choice.
This was a flying visit and I only had time to check in and to eat before walking down to the theatre; the night surprisingly mild for October.
Hamlet has a funny history in Vienna. Joseph II declared that sad scenes should be cut from plays and, crucially, that they should have a happy ending - leading to a version of Hamlet where he triumphs over Claudius and becomes King.
It’s a funny thing to think about; Hamlet with a happy ending but also living in a world where everything was like that…where no tragedy was allowed and all stories must say, clearly, “it will all work out in the end…there is no such thing as tragedy…the world is ultimately a good place”.
My therapist asked me recently if I thought I deserved better than some of the things that have happened to me. I think she expected me to say no. But I said yes. I do think I deserve better. That just isn’t, often, what has happened.
A “traditional” reading of Hamlet as *that type of tragic hero* carries some degree of implication that he is responsible for what happens to him, because he is a hero with a fatal flaw and that means the fact of the tragedy is carried within him as a person.
In his essay on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Oscar Wilde says of Hamlet, “At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act”.
I’ve never really read Hamlet as a fatally flawed character because the situation he finds himself in is so bizarre and so entirely out of his control. He is not King Lear or Antony; his own actions creating the narrative he lives in. He is one type of person put in a situation he is fundamentally not suited for, through no fault of his own. That’s why I can imagine a happy ending for Hamlet, but not once the events of the story have begun. That is, in some ways, the great tragedy of Horatio; of course he tells his Prince about the Ghost, but in that moment he dooms him. The rest is inevitable. But I think Horatio had a choice and I also think they both deserved better. But that just isn’t what happens.
I can’t find a copy of the text of the “Viennese” production of Hamlet - the one with a happy ending. I’d like to read it - not least because I want to see what happens to Horatio in that version.
This production did not end happily. It was, however, what you might call avant garde. There are multiple Hamlets, for a start.
As I get to the theatre, it occurs to me that I don’t know if it will be in English or German. I don’t speak German. It turns out it’s a bit of both; more German but still plenty of English thrown in, alongside jumping between the original text and new writing (in both German and English). Amazingly, perhaps, I am still able to follow it; with a play I didn’t know as well I would certainly have been entirely lost.
They cut Horatio, and also Laertes. At first, it is unclear if Laertes has actually been cut or not, as they get rid of the beginning of the play and jump straight to Hamlet meeting his father’s ghost; so I was wondering if Laertes, his first two scenes being gone entirely, would still appear at the end. This prospect is dismissed when Gertrude says to a (now mad) Ophelia, “you are all alone in the world. Your father is dead and your brother was tragically cut….from the script”. Which is a very funny line.
The vast majority of the actors play ever present ghosts, hovering around the stage in white sheets and doing...not much else. One of these ghost actors is a child.
The multiple Hamlets represent (or at least it seems to me that they represent) different parts of his psyche and it works in its way, although it creates the strange effect of having me like some of the Hamlet actors more than others and wishing I could see more of my favourites.
The theatre is too hot and you aren’t allowed to take drinks in.
Claudius and Gertrude double as the gravediggers.
So much of the last year of my life has involved me also being in situations beyond my control; situations in which I have, then, struggled to take action. This wasn’t, previously, a trait of Hamlet’s that I found at all relatable, but these recent situations have left me inert and paralysed in a way I haven’t experienced before. I get it now, in short.
Watching these many actors run around on stage as the different parts of Hamlet’s mind in some ways emphasises that quality - a mind of chatter and contradictions so focused on itself that he is unable to then actually do anything. Again, relatable.
The production ends with Gertrude explaining, in English, to the audience everything that happens at the end of the play; the sword fight and what happens with Fortinbras, till her monologue is interrupted by one of the Hamlets breaking her neck.
Leaving my job was maybe the biggest choice I had made in over a year, at that point. It’s been over three months now, since then, and I don’t regret it.
On my way back from the theatre, I walk a slightly longer way round so I can walk past the Austrian Parliament, which has a statue of the goddess Athena outside. Tomorrow I will fly back to the UK, see David Tennant and Gregory Doran in conversation (more on that in a different post) and then I’ll head to America - a whole different life, I hope, ahead of me.
(also, if anyone does know where I can find the text of the Viennese” production of Hamlet with a happy ending, do let me know!)
