‘Sam Blythe: Method in My Madness (A One-Man Hamlet)’ (Venue 17, until AUG 24th)

“Possessed of both comic grace and dramatic power, Blythe’s affectionate connection with his audience is Mastersonierian in the obvious regard chanelling in both directions across the footlights.”

Is Hamlet mad? Is the Royally gazumped Prince a mindless brute or meditative Brutus? We enter to find ourselves locked in with someone, someone who just can’t seem to get Hamlet out of his mind. There is a mid-century, Patrick Hamilton quality to the gaslight. Our narrator switches back and forth between his present bare circumstances and the play in which so much of not very much happens, until THAT final scene.

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s magnum opus and one of his most successful literary works, published twice in quarto editions (1603 and 1604) before the First Folio (1623). The play’s early and enduring popularity, on stage and off, makes it accessible for audiences, who will know the key plot points and themes as well as they know their chocolate bars and cartoon cereal characters. For actors, however, the destination is more troublesome. How to be distinctive yet harmonious, respectful yet challenging, insightful yet universal? Above all, how to be memorable?

This EdFringe we’ve seen Sam Blythe directed by Yorick (Guy Masterson’s ‘Animal Farm’) and by Ophelia (Elf Llyons, ‘Method in My Madness’). Unlike the Orwell adaptation, in this one-man Hamlet, Sam plays the drama primarily through the title role, amplified and distorted by the abridgement’s premise – a man locked in a room with his own thoughts. An unseen Richard Burton impersonator loftily entones the first soliloquy, topping and tailing the drama. There is a Welsh theme running throughout the modern frame, as though Captain Fluellen and Dafydd ap Gwilym have captured the drama by sudden storm. All of these subtle hints buttress the purpose of the show, which is a fine and loving tribute to Blythe’s own father – a Welsh actor who never got to play The Dane.

At 2,200 lines, even the “bad” First Quarto would have had a running time of 2 hours. The Second Quarto’s 3,800 lines equate to the 4 hours plus, jeered at by Blackadder – “Who’s Ken Brannah? I’ll tell him you said that, and I think he’ll be very hurt.” The First Folio, from which most modern editions are drawn, sits at around 3,500 lines. Getting that down to 60 minutes of comprehensive, comprehensible stage traffic requires some tough choices to be made. This is especially true for a production attempting to reconcile the alleged artistic differences between Wills Shakespeare and Kemp.

Having played Peter, Dogberry, Costard, and Bottom, the infamously adlibbing clown Kemp left The Lord Chamberlain’s Men around 1599, making his famous jig from London to Norwich. The professional ghost of Kemp haunts the text of Hamlet, not least in the play’s most iconic moment. The Light directorial touch of Kemp’s own favourite daughter, the ultra-acclaimed EdFringe giant Elf Llyons, melts the play’s too solid flesh into a resolute dew that lightly shimmers and sparkles throughout. Here is a memorable ‘Hamlet’.

‘Method in My Madness’ confirms what many of us have been thinking for a while, that Sam Blythe is the coming man of the EdFringe stage, a moody, broody, transatlantic temporal offshoot of the triggerhappy Booth dynasty perhaps. Possessed of both comic grace and dramatic power, Blythe’s affectionate connection with his audience is Mastersonierian in the obvious regard chanelling in both directions across the footlights. Come for the when Frank got Dean and Jerry back together reconciliation of auld bad performative blood – Kemp and Shakespeare are friends again. Stay for a star who is rising on the EdFringe skyline. Get your doublets on at the double and go see this!