Hamlet

When Helena Pimenta, director of the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, suggested addressing an angular text of universal theatre to Miguel del Arco, he chose Hamlet possessed by the suicidal spirit mark of the company. The stage manager challenges the traditional interpretive norm to raise a polyhedral and unstructured version of William Shakespeare’s tragedy, where respect for the original verse is not incompatible with bold and expressive updates.

Seven performers, a bed, video projections and a curtain that opens and closes indifferently are used by Del Arco to rewrite the story of the betrayed and tormented Danish prince. He uses a sinister, unorthodox staging and deep psychological significance, capable of transmitting all the pain, the terror, the homicidal impulses and the lust for vengeance of our heartbroken and tormented protagonist, a bare-chested Israel Elejalde, with his contradictions and inner ghosts, who roams the stage which, at times, could function as an extension of his own mind. Because Hamlet embraces madness and irony as the noblest ways to give meaning to his existence, even when that means renouncing true love, rebelling against a new monarch, repudiating a mother who he no longer recognises as such or fighting a fencing duel, foil in hand. “I’m dying, I’m dying. I’m dead.”

With its overwhelming dramatic load, Hamlet goes one step further in Miguel del Arco’s line of theatrical research.