Tatsuya Fujiwara - being a fan at last - yay!

A couple of week ago I watched  a new version of Hamlet, with popular Japanese actor Tatsuya Fujiwara in the lead. Fujiwara made his stage debut at the Barbican, London, under the direction of Ninagawa in 1997 and six years later became the youngest Hamlet in Japanese theatrical history, aged just 21. The pair reunited to celebrate the director’s 80th birthday celebrations. Yukio Ninagawa again directed his best-loved play, which he says ‘deals with the world’s vastness and depth’.

I (mrs aegian) was lucky enough to go twice and both times it felt like going back to another time, so effective was the dry ice in making the stage and auditorium misty. (That must have cost a bomb.)  From the first time we see the ghost the tension is high. Shakespeare had wanted to make his ghost memorable. Ghosts had been big attractions to theatres in the sixteenth century and Shakespeare wanted his to be the best, so as to attract more customers. The old King Hamlet was given a riveting role, whereas ghosts had usually been seen far away on ramparts and had not dominated several scenes. The Japanese soldiers were tense and wired, the ghost and his huge helmet seemed like something out of a Rembrandt painting so atmospheric was the staging.

The court scenes were played as if the characters were already in hell, so red their surroundings and their rich red robes, weighing the king and queen down. The production made the audience understand that while these over fed people were carousing and drinking Fortinbras was on the way to take the kingdom of Denmark over. Claudius and Gertrude are so out of touch that we can see they will be easily overthrown. Fujiwara played Hamlet broodily. We could see that he had understood how much danger his country was under and yet he had to be sure that the ghost's message was correct and Claudius had killed his father. Since he could never be certain he devised the mouseplay. THis production's play within a play was truly outstanding. The dumb show showed Japanese players miming the killing of Claudius in his orchard. We see that Claudius is not watching because he is kissing the queen. But then the same killing is enacted by Noh actors, who sit stacked up on several layers, coming down the layers or steps to enact their part. When Claudius shouts because he has realised they are depicting how he murdered his brother, all the Noh actors start running in  slo-mo, their Japanese costumes mesmerising the audience as they slowly dance off the stage. In fact this piece was almost choreographed, so skillfully do the characters run on and off stage. Rosencranzt and Guildenstren seemed to do little else than run on and off stage, whenever Claudius summoned them.

The sword fight was a masterly dance, with Hamlet and Laertes fencing as if for their lives. Hamlet wore a long Japanese robe, belted at the hips and miss aegian assured me he was very sexy as he cut and thrust against Laertes's parrying tactics. What most lifted the production above most of the others I've seen was the brooding menace from the setting and the acting. When Hamlet spoke about the 'bourne from which no traveller returned', he not only meant it but showed it because the whole weight of the drama was about people who were trying hard to hold on, survive, or come to justice, as in Hamlet's case, because the eternal, the unknowable, the terrifying eternity that crowded round them as they bumbled through their lives, was real and morever pressed in on them. Hamlet had admired Fortinbras and chose him as his successor to the crown. When Fortinbras conquers the land and walks into the castle as Hamlet is dying, his blue flags burst in on the scene and he, as a manga character, calmly walks through the set.

One of the days I saw the production I went outside and saw a small crowd of Japanese teenagers waiting by the stage door. I started talking to Hariko who had come from Japan to see Hamlet in London. I was amazed and she said Fujiwara is such a big star in Japan that many others had also flown out specially to see him. She worked as a telephone operator outside Tokyo. The previous evening she had watched Phantom of the Opera. Suddenly the stage door opened and Tatsuya Fujimara walked past, dressed in a superb pale leather jacket that matched his golden hair. He seemed to breeze past, paying no attention to the excitement around him, except to repeat, "Thank you very much." He seemed to bow briefly before me, repeating his thanks and  in the next instant he climbed into his waiting taxi. I don't suppose he noticed or saw me at all but I like to think he did mean to bow and say thanks. After he was gone I mimed reading books as I explained to Hariko that when I was a teenager I had been too busy studying to be a fan, so I had to do it now, much later. She seemed to share the joke.