ABSTRACT
ROBERT WILSON’S ADAPTION-OR TRANSmutation-of the German playwright Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine typifies both the relatively textual, monodimensional quality of Müller’s postmodernity, and the more dynamic, multimedia vision of its producer. Hamletmachine’s London season opened at the Almeida Theatre, a theater which could well have been renamed the “AllMedia” for this occasion. Mixing almost every theatrical and extra-theatrical trick in the postmodern book, it combined classical declamation, parodic classical declamation, autistic antideclamation, colloquial declamation, cry, whisper, laugh, whimper, tape-recorded screech and mutter, tape-recorded noise, mime, acrobatics, sculptural immobility, videoesque choreography, virtuoso lighting, projected slide imagery, black and white and colored film imagery, digitally deconstructed video image, and an array of musical sound tracks ranging from the nostalgic tango accompanying the cast’s final bow, to the echoing tones of a piano piece by Lieber and Stoller (composers of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”).
