Review: HAMLET 360: THY FATHER'S SPIRIT at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company

It is interesting to look at the history of art and entertainment by analyzing the innovations which have been deemed exclusively novelties and written off as fleeting trends by their contemporaries. For film, color and sound were both considered by many to be cheap gimmicks that would quickly fade out of style, within a medium that itself was sure to merely exist for a brief moment in time. Yet, in the 21st century, we still praise the brilliant color work in movies by Wes Anderson and exalt the sounds in the works of Paul Thomas Anderson. When we look, however, at 3-D technologies ranging from the two-tone glasses technology from vintage cinemas, to warped screens which became popular with the release of Oklahoma! (explaining some of the bizarre cinematic sequences in that movie), to those distorted selfies your friend just figured out how to post on Facebook, none seem to have found a lasting hold beyond trendiness or novelty entertainment. Slightly different, though sharing some characteristics, virtual reality technology is gradually developing into a tool which may be the next lasting innovation in entertainment. While the development of the technology has mostly been pounced upon by the video game industry, the theatre and film worlds have found ways to benefit from and expand the possibilities of what audiences can engage with inside a pair of high-tech glasses. Notably, Robert Lepage's company, Ex Machina, created an interactive, virtual experience called The Library at Night which let audiences roam through real and imagined libraries, including one underwater conundrum and the Library at Alexandria as it burned.

To my knowledge, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company under artistic director, Steven Maler holds the distinction of being the first major Boston theatre company to foray into virtual reality, with their curiously fascinating Hamlet 360: Thy Father's Spirit.

Upon putting on the hefty VR goggles, audiences enter Clint Ramos' cohesively-designed dreamscape, an oversized collage of prop stock treasures within a decaying Vaudeville house. The faded art deco on the walls houses an enticingly hazy, if sordid, I Spy game which anyone familiar with Hamlet cannot help but immediately scan upon being dropped in the center of the orchestra pit.

"I spy with my little eye...

A circle of chairs for a mousetrap play,

An aquarium tank in which Ophelia can lay,

A wall of curtains by a bed

(Absent, for now, of Polonius' red),

A wall of fans, tables, and chests,

A pile of dirt where Yorick rests..."

Maler has directed and adapted a clear, concise, hour-long version of the text that highlights the presence of King Hamlet's ghost, sometimes even inserting the audience as the ghost himself. The audience is lead about the expanse of space through a sepia-washed lens that enhances the noir aesthetic suggested by Ramos' costumes. Upon completion of the screening, all I could really muster was, "That was cool." And it was. It is. I encourage anyone intrigued to check out the film in 360 degrees here. It is very cool. (Additionally if you would like to host CSC and have them bring their VR equipment to an event, reach out to info@commshakes.org.)

By way of engaging with a still-developing medium, CSC has opened the floodgates for contrasting opinions, but I ultimately believe this kind of innovative work must be engaged with to push our art form forward. This virtual endeavor rescues the audience from the awkward grins and Disney-World-engagement of feeble immersive theatre, while almost entirely eliminating the prohibitive accessibility concerns of such pieces.

A big question raised by viewing this experience, however, was whether or not theatre artists are the most qualified to engage with VR creation. While the editing of the piece is generally straightforward, there are randomly interpolated jump cuts in the sequence. A few, particularly a change of perspective to highlight a dropping of poison, seem to harmoniously fuse the poetry of William Shakespeare with the ideologies Lev Kuleshov. Others seem jarring and erroneous. Additionally, the cast uniformly gives theatrical performances. Perhaps this is an active choice in regards to the cavernous space in which the action is set, but as I sit, seemingly, on Gertrude's bed, I want to feel that I am intimately witnessing a scene with her son that none other than I are privy to. I cannot fully feel this way if she and Hamlet are projecting loudly enough that every gravedigger in Denmark can hear their quibbles. Likewise, aside from a few intercut shots which submerge the viewers beneath the murky waters of a bathtub, Hamlet's most famous speech seemed to be abrasively bulldozed through. I think of intimate live performances I have seen, a production in which the actor playing Hamlet sat amongst the audience and whispered the speech to us, or of Dame Judy Dench's masterfully subtle Lady Macbeth, filmed for the BBC. To fully take advantage of this technology, I believe we must take advantage of the expanse of intimacy it allows.

The production rarely engages with the full capabilities of film, essentially delivering a production of Hamlet that could exist as a live evening of traversing theatre. Were this production not rendered through virtual reality, I fear it would be incredibly standard. Solid, but in no way innovative or revolutionary. What is it missing? I think it is missing any sense of playfulness within the structure of virtual reality. I know that at any given moment I am supposed to be looking at Horatio or whoever is speaking. But, as a member of a generation raised on roleplaying video games, I want to feel as though I've experienced an individualized narrative; that in choosing to turn away from the scene Shakespeare wrote, I've caught Gertrude passing a note of suspicion to Claudius. I think it is also missing the full plunge into a visually evocative world that film allows. Understandably, the hour is mostly filled with text from the lengthy play. However, what allowances can be made within the narrative of Hamlet that rely more on visual than auditory stimulation? The overall aesthetic of the piece is well-developed, but there are very few memorable visuals interspersed through the action.

Again, all of these criticisms can be chalked up to the fact that this attempt, though innovative and successful, is still very much a first attempt. As the company explained, the information files for a complete 360 degree live action film are larger than what even some advanced VR headsets are capable of playing. This field is still growing. Even if, Hamlet 360 is engaged with as a novelty, it points to a promising future which I hope CSC and other Boston theatre artists continue to explore.