Take a fresh look at Shakespeare with Tom Stoppard and Hertfordshire County Youth Theatre

The production consists of two plays: Dogg’s Hamlet, in which a group of schoolchildren attempt to perform the Bard’s famous tragedy in 15 minutes, and Cahoot’s Macbeth, where illegal performances of Shakespeare’s works are being staged in people’s living rooms.

Palace Theatre Young People’s Director James Williams has been putting his cast through their paces. By doing two plays, he points out everyone involved gets the chance to take on roles that will challenge them.

“There’s only one person in the cast who plays the same character throughout, the rest take on very different parts and the lead characters have to command the stage as they’re playing key tragic figures.”

Stoppard’s plays are notorious for their badinage – in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which also uses Shakespeare’s works as a springboard into action, the lead characters engage in a verbal tennis match. I ask James how DCHM stands up against Stoppard’s earlier work?

“In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead we’re exploring what’s happened to those two minor characters who were waiting in the wings of Shakespeare’s great tragedy and again, what’s important here is what’s happening around the play. In Dogg’s Hamlet the players have no context to what they’re doing. They’re gesturing in the right place and saying the odd word of Shakespeare but are getting nothing more from it.”

James says Dogg’s Hamlet uses a language called Dogg, which consists of ordinary English words but with meanings completely different from the ones we assign them. In the play, three schoolchildren are rehearsing Hamlet in English, which to them is a foreign language.

“One of the most fantastic things about Dogg’s Hamlet is it recognises the angst we often have about understanding Shakespeare. The play’s language is largely unknown to us so it sets us up for a huge sense of relief when we suddenly hear lines we can recognise.”

Here, James says, is where reciting Shakespeare backwards comes in handy.

“We wanted them to speak it backwards so they were just reading it as a string of words to see what that does to a performance. As an actor you’re always trying to understand the text, but we talked about how, when there is a language barrier, you have to rely on other means of communication – visually and physically and through emotion.

“Through games and exercises we’ve discovered what it’s like to learn a new language and become fluent in it to the point in which you start to think in a new language and respond in it.”

The second play, Cahoot’s Macbeth is a shortened performance of the Scottish play. The piece is dedicated to the playwright Pavel Kohout whom Stoppard had met in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1977. Because Kohout and some fellow actors had been barred from working in the theatre by the communist Government due to their involvement with Charter 77, he had developed an adaption of Macbeth to be performed in living rooms.

For the play, the young actors researched 20th Century Czechoslovakia to get to grips with the climate of cultural suppression that was rife at the time.

“Essentially, both plays are about how language can be used both for good to educate and communicate and how it can also be something that’s abused and misused.

“In Cahoot’s Macbeth, we see how illegitimate rule can create suffering and darkness.

“The play confirms how very accurately and powerfully we can use language to speak about what’s going on in the world. As a play it’s urgent – it’s something we should be performing because of what it says about human nature and about how, by stopping liberal action, free speech becomes a thing of the past.”

Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth will be performed by Hertfordshire County Youth Theatre at Watford Palace Theatre on Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1 at 7.45pm with a Saturday matinee at 3pm.

Details: 01923 225671