Dada Masilo’s Hamlet review – dance remix gives the tragedy some potent tweaks

. UK edition

Stage image of dancer in yellow dress holding a goblet in front of two others wearing dark clothes
A casualty of others’ actions … Lehlohonolo Madise, left, as Ophelia in Dada Masilo’s Hamlet. Photograph: Lauge Sorensen

The late choreographer heightens Ophelia and Gertrude’s stories yet squanders some of the speeches in an intense hour

Words, words, words. Can Hamlet retain its tragic force without using most of them? This hour-long dance-theatre remix by the late South African choreographer Dada Masilo preserves few speeches and its opening is not auspicious, crashing straight into “To be, or not to be” shorn of context and characterisation.

There follows, as is customary, a meeting between the prince and Ophelia, but Masilo replaces the usual cruel encounter with stolen moments amid a ceremony, as if they are meeting anew like Romeo and Juliet at the Capulet ball. Matching each other’s movements, amid clapped hands, thrusting shoulders and rippling chests, they grow closer with a hint of tango footwork. From this flashback, Masilo practically fast-forwards their choreography with a sense of doom.

Letting the pair share a tender duet reinforces their romance but also heightens the violence of the nunnery scene where they are traditionally first seen together. Masilo adds another new scene to show Gertrude’s despair upon receiving news of Old Hamlet’s death rather than introducing her as sanguinely remarried to his brother. We see her seek strength amid grief, supported by courtiers whose pulsing, grounded movement is a message of persistence. This is dancing felt in the gut.

Wooed offstage, Gertrude returns for a convivial ceremony where a young couple are ticked off for getting too raunchy on the dancefloor. Movement styles across generations and cultures are blended by Masilo, who drew attention for remoulding ballet’s classics. Her ensemble is often an industrious force, driven by relentless percussion, as each scene breaks like a wave against Thuthuka Sibisi’s compositions. There’s little levity until the arrival of a leapfrogging Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but when the pair perform The Mousetrap, their audience gradually closes in on them and it too reaches an intense peak.

Hamlet learns of his father’s murder through a sequence of projected silhouettes, almost anticipating this play within the play, and he both races towards and recoils from the images in a maelstrom of movement that deftly captures his paralysis. But the soliloquies are diminished by the Dance Factory’s production, with the “too solid flesh” lines screamed at partygoers.

Hamlet is portrayed by both a dancer, Tumelo Lekana, and an actor, Aphiwe Dike. Llewellyn Mnguni dances as Gertrude while Dorothy Ann Gould (an RSC Gertrude in 2006) gives the report of Ophelia’s death in a voiceover. Ophelia herself scarcely speaks and Masilo adds an odd sequence where she seems to die in Gertrude’s arms, as if avoiding solitary death, before depicting her drowning, too. But Lehlohonolo Madise’s superb valedictory solo as Ophelia cleverly encapsulates motifs of poisoning and imprisonment from all the dances that have come before, making her a casualty of others’ actions.

This Claudius (Thando Mgobhozi) appears genuinely racked with guilt in church, where the hip circles and bends of the party scenes are replaced with a kneeled, twisting prayer that gives way to full extensions, as if eased by confession. The latter stages lose focus but the choreography’s omnipresent sense of returning to the earth foreshadows a climax where all are struck down by the kingdom’s collective sickness, stressed by the lighting of Suzette le Sueur (who also provides some of the elegant costumes). It’s a collection of often piercing scenes that never quite establish full collective power – a tragedy out of joint.