On the 400th anniversary of the death of the bard, it is entirely fitting that the Washington Ballet should bring Stephen Mills’ Hamlet (2000) to the stage this season, a work which has been well-received through its lifespan although not as often performed as one might think. For it is, to my mind, a wholly successful translation of Shakespeare’s epic tragedy, neither tentative nor yet overly-ambitious, boasting a stylized simplicity and sensibly distilling the sprawling five acts into two, a concentration of high drama in a very powerful hour and forty minutes. This rigorous containment and welcome lack of self-indulgence was reflected in the choice of composer. Philip Glass’ stunning score gives a propulsive character to the whole but also, as Septime Weber pointed out in his opening address, a simplicity upon which dance may be built. The real rather than fictive tragedy of the evening was the absence of a live orchestra. There is no relational dynamic with a mere recording and there were some awkward transitions, not to speak of abrupt terminations of sound at the end of each act. "Tis true, tis pity, and pity ‘tis, tis true."
But otherwise, the company performed with a particularly striking display of character progression in the main roles. Maki Onuki as Ophelia was a case in point. As her plight became more pronounced, she displayed to a nicety the yielding physicality of vulnerability, with a supple spine that could bend any which way and very flexible legs. Her descent into madness, hair in unballetic disarray, was danced with fragile yet manic energy. A very clever piece of theatre overlaid her dying, with three incarnations of herself, as daughter, sister, and lover, dancing with the men in her life, as the real drowning woman appeared suspended over the stage, at the last, a mere body of light as the darkening river carried her away. In the same style, Hamlet’s feigned madness was also conceived as incarnations on stage ; later in Act II, in his madness of anguish, the incarnations seemed to stand in judgment over him. This was all sleekly done. Jonathan Jordan as Hamlet started off as an unsure young man, but then again, he is supposed to be. Still for the sake of the dance, one could have done with more immediate impact. He warmed up into more power of expression. The male pas de quatre with his various selves brilliantly drew together the visual energy of the first act and his soliloquies (how cleverly choreographed) were exercises in self-torment and physical angst – just the sort we’d expect from Shakespeare’s unusually emotional Dane. As he was mostly on stage, we were certainly not suffering a Hamlet without a prince. But an unfortunate costume – dated shirt and pleated trousers that were on the baggy side – meant we missed out completely on the visual of powerful wrists and limbs. The concealment was a loss surely, and, to my mind, entirely inexcusable from the dramatic point of view.