If you ever had any cause to doubt that Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ is the most significant work ever written in the English language, then take a look at theatre in 2023. The play itself is having a rare fallow year. But some four centuries after it was written, there are three major plays about ‘Hamlet’ running in London. Not to get all wanky about it, but ‘Hamlet’ is so enmeshed in our psyche that we can’t escape it even when we’re not actually staging it. The National Theatre has its blockbuster Jack Thorne drama ‘The Motive and the Cue’, the RSC’s smash adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ is heading West End-wards in autumn, and in between comes performance artist Dickie Beau’s moving leftfield tribute.
‘Re-member Me’ is a work that sneaks up on you. At first it’s a bit of arch fun, as Beau – real name Richard Boyce – lip syncs to recordings of sundry legendary British actors playing Hamlet, and sundry theatre grandees talking about playing ‘Hamlet’: the indestructible Ian McKellen and former NT boss Richard Eyre are the most prominent speakers to contribute original interviews, while John Gielgud – his voice instantly recognisable if you saw ‘The Motive and the Cue’ – is the main archive interviewee.
It’s funny: Beau exaggeratedly gesturing along to McKellen’s huffing and grunting, or interpolating The Bard’s existential verse with banging pop tunes (The Village People’s ‘YMCA’ and Crystal Castles’ ‘Crimewave’).
But surely enough it spools forwards to what is clearly the main ‘point’ to Jan van den Bosch’s production: a remembrance of the Hamlet given by the actor Ian Charleson. Depending on your levels of theatre nerdery you may or may not know that Charleson – star of the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ – replaced Daniel Day-Lewis in Eyre’s 1989 NT production after Day-Lewis had a breakdown midway through the run and quit stage acting for good. The prodigiously talented Charleson was a great choice of replacement, but there was a big caveat: he was dying of AIDS, and didn’t have much time left. He was, by all accounts, extraordinary in the role, but there are no recordings and as press weren’t formally invited, there was only one major review (from Sunday Times critic John Peters, who’d been tipped off and was so blown away that he set up an award in Charleson's name when he passed away eight weeks after the end of the run).
However, Beau’s interviewees did see Charleson's performance: their recollections are as close as a twenty-first-century audience is ever going to get to it. We’re only touching from a distance – McKellen is particularly frank about the fact that he doesn’t remember it particularly clearly. But he does remember Charleson; he does remember the AIDS era.
I don’t think we ever hear Charleson speak, though we hear him sing and see footage of him running. By contrast, Beau syncs along to a poignant series of interviews with an increasingly ageing Gielgud, another colossal theatre talent, but one who lived on into his nineties. If the show is an attempt to summon Charleson, Gielgud is the ghost we actually get, a man who looks back on his life with a clear regret – sad his friends are dead, concerned he didn’t do enough of value during his time, wistful about growing up in an era when homosexuality was illegal.
‘Re-member’ me is literally about ‘Hamlet’. But it’s also an exploration of the themes of ’Hamlet’ – doubt, death, regret, lives not fully lived – as they applied to Gielgud, Charleson and the generations of brilliant gay men who never got to be quite of this world. Currently without Arts Council funding or an artistic director, Hampstead Theatre has had a tumultuous year. But this funny, poignant, strange show is the best thing I’ve seen on the main stage in years – it would be nice to think this was the turning point.