Sam Blythe: Method in my Madness
★★★☆☆ Unresolved
Assembly Roxy (Venue 139): Thurs 1 – Sun 25 Aug 2024 (not 14)
Review by Rebecca Mahar
A disyllabic clown with a trunk of tricks puts on a red nose and transforms into Hamlet, Prince of Denmark— or perhaps he was Hamlet all along? Sam Blythe: Method in my Madness is an experimental one-man Hamlet that ultimately creates more questions than it answers.
Opening with the clown, whose accent is unidentifiable (perhaps he’s meant to be Danish?), discovering in his trunk a red leather-bound book with a sticker of the Welsh flag on the front, Method in my Madness immediately plants seeds that, while not quite abandoned, will never be explained.
Sam Blythe. Promo imagee for Method in My Madness.
The book is not the Red Book of Hergest (notably not a source of Hamlet) as its colour and affixed dragon may imply, but apparently a script for a one-man Hamlet, the title page of which the clown shows to the audience. After some bits with props that are impossible to see unless one is in the first or second row of the Snug Bar’s un-raked seating, the clown pops on a red foam nose.
At once he begins to speak a clear and fluent stream of Shakespeare, Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Startled, the clown rips off the nose, and returns to himself. It is now that the show really begins, with the clown choosing to dive into his role as the one-man Hamlet, committing to the nose and the story.
The story itself is sharply cut, both cleverly and of necessity: reducing Shakespeare’s longest play to one hour is an unenviable task. Andrew Cowie’s adaptation chooses to focus on Hamlet’s disgust at his mother’s decision to marry his uncle after his father, the king, has died. Through this lens it is possible to pick and choose a select few scenes and speeches to tell a mostly cohesive story that follows the arc of the larger play, though at some points, such as the death of Polonius, it feels as if there is simply too much missing.
a sympathetic clarity
Blythe’s performance as Hamlet is exceptional. He brings a sympathetic clarity to the text and this interpretation of the character that call for a full outing as the Prince of Denmark. When he briefly steps into other characters, they are as distinct from Hamlet as Hamlet is from the clown.
It is in this distinctness that some of the show’s cracks appear, however. Hamlet is English, Blythe’s natural accent. The ghost of Hamlet’s father is for some reason Welsh, as is the third player’s character Lucianus later in the play; as an analogue for Hamlet’s murderous uncle Claudius, perhaps the audience was meant to connect the two— despite Claudius having been given no voice. The player king, who is the analogue for Hamlet’s father in the play within a play, is for some reason Scottish.
In addition to this accentual confusion, the convention of the nose being the device that defines whether Blythe is the clown or Hamlet breaks down as the show goes along. By the end it is meant to, with the nose becoming more and more difficult to remove until it is fully absorbed by the clown who becomes stuck in the story. But prior to this, Blythe removes the nose at several points while still in “Hamlet mode” and remains in the play, a jarring departure from his performance’s physical and vocal precision.
Why the red book?
Once fully absorbed by Hamlet, the clown gradually becomes Welsh during the course of the famous “to be, or not to be” speech, looping back to the opening image of the red book. Why the red book? Why Wales, and Welsh? The play makes no attempt at professing itself a Hamlet set in Wales. Why a Scottish player king? Why an English Hamlet among these? Why the broken convention of the nose? Is the clown meant to be Hamlet, or Yorick, or entirely unconnected— and what on earth is his accent?
There’s no reason Hamlet can’t have any accent, or be from anywhere; but with one person playing all the parts, there needs to be some rhyme or reason behind the choices. They are choices, rather than simply acknowledging that anyone can and should play Shakespeare in their natural accent: therefore they must mean something. What that is, in this case, is not quite clear.
Co-directed by Blythe and Elf Lyons, Method in my Madness is worth the hour spent in a slightly musty basement to see it, for Blythe’s performance alone. The script and concept themselves need some reworking before whatever this show’s next step may be— but with a little refinement, it has a definite future before it.
Running time: One hour (no interval)
Assembly Roxy (Snug Bar), 2 Roxburgh Place EH8 9SU (Venue 139)
Thursday 1 – Sunday 25 August 2024
Daily (not 14): 12.55pm
Details and tickets at: Book here
Instagram: @_s.blythe
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