by AMY BARRATT

For Raoul Bhaneja, who is bringing his Hamlet (solo) to the New Classical Theatre Festival this week, it’s something of a homecoming. “I haven’t done a show in Montreal since NTS,” he says, meaning since he graduated from the National Theatre School in 1996. It was during those NTS years that Bhaneja saw Robert Lepage’s Elsinore, “the most high-profile solo Hamlet attempt to date,” as the actor puts it.

Critics at the time were in agreement that Elsinore was visually and technically stunning; they just weren’t sure it illuminated Hamlet—either the play or the character.

“It was magical, transformative,” Bhaneja says of the production, “but I thought even then, if I was to do it, I’d do something completely opposite. Around the same time, [Toronto-based actress] Clare Coulter was touring a show called The Fever, by Wallace Shawn. She came into a studio that NTS was renting on St-Laurent, pulled up an old couch and said, ‘Can I start now?’ Then, without lights, costumes or anything, she took us on this one-hour journey. It made you remember the basic elements of theatre: text, actor, audience.”

Bhaneja’s Hamlet (solo) is the un-Elsinore, performed without costumes, props or set. “The architecture of whatever theatre space we’re in becomes our set,” says the actor, who has conceived the piece with director Robert Ross Parker, a Concordia Theatre grad whom Montreal audiences may remember from Dunghill Dunghill Dunghill!, which he wrote and performed at infinitheatre and Centaur. In this interpretation of the Danish play, Bhaneja plays 17 characters. Without costumes or other visual aids, inquiring minds want to know how he manages scenes with two or more characters?

“We try to avoid the commedia dell ‘arte thing of jumping back and forth,” Bhaneja says. “Ours is like Hamlet in close-up.” A more subtle approach, for sure, but one that seems to make sense to audiences raised on TV and film.

“Also, Shakespeare helps you out a lot,” says the actor, who had previously played Laertes in a Neptune Theatre production. “Shakespeare cleverly introduces characters one by one, and he puts everybody’s name in right away to really help the audience focus and keep all the characters straight.”

Bhaneja’s is one of the shorter Hamlets, running just two hours, whereas the uncut text can easily run four. He claims he didn’t have to cut as much as you’d think to get it down to this length. “You actually save a lot of time when you don’t have people physically making entrances and exits,” he quips. “Also, there are two kinds of stories in Hamlet: family stories and political stories. We focus on the family stories, though obviously the two do intersect.”

Hamlet (solo) premiered last January at Toronto’s small but prestigious Theatre Passe Muraille. It has since played a much larger hall at the Banff Centre for the Arts and most recently did a couple of performances at Center Stage in New York, a tiny off-Broadway space where Philip Seymour Hoffman’s LAByrinth Theatre has originated many works.

Also at the New Classical Theatre Festival: Last chance to catch Gross Indecency (8 p.m. Aug. 31–Sept. 2 at the MainLine Theatre, 3997 St-Laurent) and Last Call (8:30 p.m. through Sept 2 at the Balustrade, Monument-National, 1182 St-Laurent).

Hamlet (Solo) runs until Sept. 9 at Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), 540-0774

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