The Mind - frontal nudity of your true self

Hamlet  (The Wooster Group) 

Tonight I feel less than uninspired; paraphrasing Shakespeare, my life "is out of joint". Still, what better night to write about a tormented soul like Hamlet? So I try to put down a few words about the show I saw last night; actually it has not been a show, but a comprehensive life-questioning experience; for the "receptives", maybe a life changing one.

I went with misconceptions. I had read that it is a Postmodern Hamlet. Phew, I said to myself, another stupid Postmodern crazy stuff. A New-York-ish experimental stage-put of Hamlet linked to the Richard Burton 1964 one... Come again? I said: an unimaginative virtuoso show off!

Like an extremely dry wine, this play was not sweet but incredibly effective and necessarily not pleasant. The performance was very analytical, complex, without affect, absolutely no emotion permitted, clinical, stentorian, icy.  These cold means were instrumental for the spectator to experience the real flow of consciousness of characters, and especially of Hamlet. Indeed our minds are so cruel with ourselves and with others; so sharp in judgment. Our mind is playing incessantly an intricate, fragmented game. This sense of fragmentation is overwhelming in the show. Yes, a la Postmodernist deconstructivism, but also this fragmentation alludes to a very human process, I am referring to how we run from one thought to another without a self-evident and ready sense of purpose, how we construct in and from total chaos our arguments that lead to action. All these are ephemeral, along with us, all shadows! I am referring to the insanity, scariness of our minds and also to the dignified image of our sharp, relentless, powerful razor-minds (again). The futility of our thoughts given our finitude makes our minds that sharp and without pity for us and for others. Our mortality gives power to our mind. And vice versa, its power makes us think more intensely and with no compassion about death. They complement each other perfectly. This strong fuzziness of the play, replicating a real stream of consciousness, is also an un-escapable "feeling" for the reader of Shakespeare.

The New York group made me experience first and foremost the Anglo-Saxon ethos. We are lashed senselessly with hundreds of stimuli in order to provoke thinking on the edge, the edge of life. Discard the beautiful and comfortable "clothes" of every day life and leave your naked self to confront your unembellished judgment - frontal nudity of your true self.

In the end I want to make a few provincial meta-comments, cause we are really very far away from the center. In a Postmodern way, that is not to be blamed. However, I felt it like a huge handicap last night. We would never (I feel tonight) attain this kind of effectiveness and professionalism in theatre or in any other domain. Like I said, it is an undeniable difference in ethos and structure, but it stays also with the set standards. We would not think to set them that high; not that we would think them unreachable, but we would not have the concept of such high level. 

Don't read a self-help story (that is book?!) this week. Get money from friends and go to NY to see the play if you haven't in Bucharest last week! And if you get there, never leave.