The production of Hamlet at the Dublin Theatre Festival was intense, sad, and riotous fun. It was a very loose adaptation by a theatre group from Argentina, Teatro La Plaza, featuring eight actors who all have Down Syndrome. At the start I wasn’t quite sure what we had let ourselves in for, but the actors won me over very quickly. The play begins with a graphic video of a woman giving birth and a child’s head being measured.
There were some deeply serious parts of the play, such as talking about the slurs that they receive, but there was also a lot of humour and a sense of fun imbued by the actors.
One part had the actors stage ‘The Mousetrap’, but they needed four more people from the audience. They gave these neurotypical people the roles of tree one, tree two, moon, and poisoner behind tree one. It got a lot of laughs, but it is also the roles that people with Down syndrome would have to perform in any production.
Each actor was clearly trying to work their own experiences into the production. Sex is brought up at several times during the show and is something that the individuals want to do, but cannot. This is framed as Ophelia’s father being controlling of her because she is special (a word often used for those with Down Syndrome), but also that neurodivergent people not being allowed to make these life decisions for themselves.
The three actresses take out read from letters that they had prepared about what they dream their life could be like. Their simplicity is harrowing. One wants to live in an apartment by themselves and work as a chef; another wants to have a boyfriend and talk to him on WhatsApp; the third wants to have a baby.
Earlier one of the actors came into the audience to deliver a soliloquy. He stood on a chair two rows in front of me. One of the points of the play was to break down barriers between different groups of people, but the fact that the entire play was in Spanish created another barrier to understanding. While I wanted to look at the actor delivering his lines, I kept having to look up to my right to read the subtitles on the screen.
The production values were surprisingly high. At one point Claudius (Claudio) is mixing potions that he can kill Hamlet with and his shadow is projected onto the screen behind him, it looked stunning. The use of video was also very good. Aside from the aforementioned birthing scene, cameras were used to show actors backstage, audience reactions, and previously filmed footage.
The show ended with a reworking of ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ by the Kinks. The actors came into the audience and danced, then invited the entire audience up onto the stage to dance with them. It was quickly filled with people having fun on a Saturday night.
One thing that I was wondering about during the show is what would people with Down Syndrome think about it. There were several on them in the audience and I would have loved to ask them, but it wasn’t to be.
Washing My Brain 