Vysotsky as Hamlet

For all the obvious differences, the scene is reminiscent of David Garrick’s brilliant obsequies two hundred years earlier. Those were officially sanctioned, orderly, designed to honor the greatest English actor as a national hero. Vysotsky’s were unofficial and disorderly, a sign of repressed desire for freedom in defiance of oppressive authority. But Vysotsky was also a national hero, and, like Garrick, he was especially identified with Hamlet. In part, he appeared with his guitar. The production began on a bare stage, open to the whitewashed back wall, which was adorned only with a heavy wooden cross. Two silhouetted gravediggers swigged vodka and tossed dirt and skulls out of an open grave downstage (the grave remained throughout). Hamlet, in casual modern dress, approached the grave and, accompanying himself on the guitar, recited Pasternak’s Hamlet poem from the banned Dr. Zhivago:

The stir is over. I step forth on the boards.
Leaning against upright by the entrance
I strain to make the far-off echo yield
A cue to the events that may come in my day.

Pasternak’s great translation of Hamlet defined the character in Russian terms - serious, dedicated, self-sacrificing; he is a witness, even a Christ-like sufferer who "gives up his will in order to ‘do the will of him that sent him’ Hamlet is not a drama of weakness, but of duty and self-denial." He has been allotted the role of "judge of his own time and servant of the future" (Pasternak, quoted in Rowe 148). His reality, as the poem suggest, is interwoven with that of the actor, in struggle with himself, putting himself on the line in order to explode "the misrepresentations which produced moral failure in Soviet life" (Golub 161):

And yet the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted
And nothing an avert the final curtain’s fall.
I stand alone. All else is swamped in Pharisaism.
To live life to the end is not to cross a field.

The visual and symbolic dominance of the Taganka’s mobile curtain was designed to carry the production’s distinctively Soviet meaning. Coarsely woven of wool, though appearing like macramé with "threads hanging in evil bundles", the curtain controlled the action, falling from the ceiling after the opening song, moving around and between the actors,

like a giant monster . . . setting the pace, and holding within its folds the symbols and tools of power - black armbands, swords, goblet, thrones edged with knives. It envelops Ophelia, intimidates Polonius, protects Gertrude , supports Claudius and threatens Hamlet. Finally it sweeps the stage clean and moves toward the audience as though to destroy it too. (M. Croyden, quoted in Leiter 145)

. . . . The theatrical emphasis did not, however, transform the meaning of the play into an endless succession of mirrored images. Rather, it spoke of the theater’s power to construct for its public truth matters. Vysotsky’s style of playing fit in with this conception. His strategy was to maintain the distance between actor and role (as in Zadek and Muller though for a different purpose), not blending with the character but expressing his own personal relationship to it. Thus he remained the singer, the troubadour performing the part and communicating his relationship to Hamlet as a way of disclosing his own isolation, of establishing his own poetic voice, and most important of seeking a way to live. He began the run as rather "nihilistic", but as his conception matured, his Hamlet became more attuned, more a searcher for possible answers to the "necessary question" that he speaks of in his own poem called "My Hamlet" (Gershkovich 128-9). The production, like the actor, came to speak for an affirmation of life in the face of curtain and grave, a post-Stalinist theme of "survival and salvation, rather than the Stalin era’s death them, revenge" (Golub 166).

A year after Vysotsky’s death, Lyubimov put together a performance collage entitle The Poet Vladimir Vysotsky, which was banned before it opened, though a few public "dress rehearsals’ escaped the censor’s fist. Focusing on Vysotsky’s place in Soviet culture, the show re-enacted his street songs, his anti-war songs, his evocations of everyday Soviet life, all with an undercurrent of social alienation and a muted desire to speak out. Interspersed throughout were references to and fragments of Hamlet, such as a satiric dialogue in which the King and Polonius discussed the strategic "madness" of Hamlet’s "singing hooliganism" or, as a culmination, a reprise of "To be or not to be", the cornerstone of Pasternak’s and Vysotsky conception. From a song about Russian baths the performance shifted without pause to Vysotsky’s recorded voice swiftly traversing the soliloquy: "so a thought turns us all into cowards and our decisiveness withers like a flower . . . Thoughts that at first promised success die with a sweep of a hand." The finale returned to the singer and his songs, producing a double image of hpe and defiance against death and loss: "They’ve cornered me, cornered me -/ But the huntsman isn’t left with anything . . ." was followed by "I didn’t have time . . . to finish living. I won’t have time to finish singing . . . " At the end the voice faltered, like Hamlet’s, into a long silence (Gershkovich 116-26).

Hamlet, by Anthony B. Dawson, Manchaster Univesity Press, NY, 1995)

Hamlet in the Soviet Union:

Hamlet has been in the repertoire of the Taganka Theater since 1972 [article written in 1976]. According to a rumor circulating among Moscow intellectuals, the play has been tolerated only because heroism is in favor. The exploits of cosmonauts are extolled, and a stress on heroic deeds is ideologically desirable. Hamlet’s heroism has become firmly established. (Among the factors responsible are the work of humanist Shakespeare scholars, Pasternak’s translation and interpretation, and the post-Stalin stress on Hamlet’s conscience and courage.)

The Taganka Theater has traditionally presented plays from another era, stressing current relevance. Its Hamlet is directed by the eminent Yuri Lyubimov. Performances are infrequent, perhaps because the dominant impression is not one of heroism.

Vladimir Vysotsky, who plays Hamlet, displays his customary energy and passion. Without doubt or vacillation, he fights valiantly against an evil ruler and a corrupt court. He begins by reciting Pasternak’s "Hamlet" poem to the accompaniment of his guitar. (Vysotsky is the most popular Russian balladier.) Between the action on stage and the audience are two (silhouetted) gravediggers working on a pile of real dirt. They exhume various skulls. A. Anikst, who kindly described this production to me, said that the theme of death predominates. Others have spoken of a dominant impression of tragedy, horror, and pain. Ophelia’s madness is depicted so that the world around her seems mad as well. Some of the scenes, particularly the final one, evoke a sense of tragic, senseless suffering which is so much part of Russian history. Absent is the usual final Shakespearean sense of reconciliation, of relief at order restored; rather, one is aroused to share in the pain and to ask, "Why did this have to happen?"

Hedrick Smith, Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, saw the play and afterwards asked the director Lyubimov how pertinent he considered his Hamlet to the Soviet present. Lyubimov replied: "The play is a classic because it so eternal. If it ever stops sounding contemporary, if it does not make people think about themselves, there is no point in playing it." As Smith, suggests, this cautious answer is important for what it does not deny. Lyubimov paused to make sure that Smith "Had gotten his meaning." He then proceeded to give Smith the impression that he, Lyubimov, views "To be or not to be" soliloquy as a "moral sermon to the audience not to cooperate with evil." Lyubimov added: "Hamlet is a very decent man, severe in criticizing himself for inaction. He is afraid of death. We are all afraid of death, of losing careers, of the unknown. That is why we tolerate evil." Smith calls Lyubimov a master of a ploy often used to liberal theaters – "to perform unchangeable classics but give them a modern twist that makes them more politically potent than anything contemporary Soviet dramatists could get away with."

Rowe, Eleanor - Hamlet: A Window on Russia, New York, New York University Press, 1976.