SHAKESPEARE. SHOSTAKOVICH. HAMLET

Concert show The world’s most renowned dramatic work assumes the new form of a concert show starring Yevgeny Mironov and the Primorsky Stage orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre. The idea of this production belongs to Yevgeny Mironov, for whom it is his third experience in playing Hamlet on stage. The actor previously worked with the world’s leading directors Peter Stein and Robert Lepage, and in the latter case even had a try at all the roles of Shakespeare’s tragedy. In this new production directed by Marina Brusnikina he appears as the reader whose words are dramatically linked with music by Dmitry Shostakovich. The great composer repeatedly turned to Shakespeare’s works, and in this case the orchestra performs his music written for the film Hamlet of 1967, and for Akimov’s stage version presented at the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1932. Thus, owing to the synthesis of music and words, Shakespeare’s five-act tragedy, is unfolded to the audience in its entire scale over a much shorter period of time. It still makes one feel the gradual and irreversible collapse of Hamlet’s world. “In a concert version it is impossible to recite or act out the entire play, but if I omit something, it is filled in by music, and vice versa. I hope that the combination of music and words will produce a certain effect, which does not occur either in cinema or in dramatic production, that is, an opportunity to demonstrate, on the one hand, fully, and on the other, in a concentrated way, the tragedy of this whole story. In this concise poetic and musical narrative, I as an artist have got a difficult task: to touch upon each of the characters, to penetrate it for a while, then leave it and penetrate another one, always being in partnership with the great music by Shostakovich”. Yevgeny Mironov