The Making of a Monologue: Robert Wilson's Hamlet

Anyone questioning the existence of God need look no further than this documentary on performance artist Robert Wilson's version of Shakespeare's classic play. Listening to his collaborators and Wilson himself--who speaks with his head cradled in his hand; the effort to explain (in tedious detail) his brilliance, an apparently taxing chore--there's just no doubt: Robert Wilson is God. Everything that everyone says in the film is in relationship to "Bob" (as Wilson is called), a repetitious, self-indulgent man with a fair eye for form, a good feeling for utilizing space on the stage, and an exceedingly fine appreciation of his own talent. His decision to remount Hamlet in his own peculiarly bastardized form came about because contemporary productions were "too psychological," "implying too much meaning," and the ultimate failing: "too common." Bob, on the other hand, took a different tack, mixing speeches from different characters, focusing on movement ("we don't talk much about the text; about what it means"), and using cheap lighting and sound effects. All of this is, as his cronies remind us, "very typically Bob." And, looking back at our review of Robert Wilson's Stations (VL-6/87), which we characterized as "an hour which could have been spent more profitably observing the convection process in a pot of boiling water," I see that my opinion hasn't changed one whit; Robert Wilson's Hamlet is indeed "very typically Bob," but won't even rank as a footnote 50 years from now in either a history of late 20th-century theatre or Shakespearean scholarship. Not recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)