Kupenga Kwa Hamlet Review - To be or not to be? That is the point!

''To be, or not to be, that is the point.'' Hamlet, a tragedy written by Shakespeare taken by the award winning The Two Gents productions take to the stage at The Ustinov theatre in Bath. They ingeniously take the play and make an intriguing new version of the revenge tragedy tearing down and rebuilding the play to create a poetic and spiritual tale. The play being 75 minutes long show that they can pack just as much if not more than the longer version of Shakespeare as the director Arne Pohlmeier deliberately uses the ''first quarto'' rather than the longer version as his storytelling template.

The actors Tonderai Munyevu and Denton Chikura, both from Zimbabwe, brave the stage by taking on all fifteen of the characters from the play wearing only orange boiler suits and having access only to two props none other than a wicker matt and mbira (used as a thumb piano and a cup.) They tell the story using African storytelling culture with traces of the Shona custom. Brilliantly, they keep the audience members on their toes by interacting and making eye contact with them and each other as they perform their story within a story.

So how do they succeed in playing all the characters without completely leaving the audience in confusement? The director cleverly gets them to use simple hand gestures and voice so that the actors could adopt the roles in an instant. For example there was Gertrude who had her hand constantly on her cheek and ''Ofelia'' indicates the popping of breasts. They posses beautiful singing voices which resonates around the space. The sound and rhythm is so important to create spiritual emotion to the audience as the play starts off with a traditional Zimbabwean funeral song for the death of the king.


What I love about this production is that, like a panto it can be different every night. I realised when we were able to talk to the director and actors after the performance that it was very much a work in progress taking on the opinion of its audiences. Their reaction is completely different every night as talking to the audience can result in the audience members talking back to them which forces them to improvise. I would say this is most effective to people who are slightly bored by the usual standards of Hamlet and want to see something new and original, I certainly did, having seen many Shakespearian productions, this was one of the most memorable for me as it made it more entertaining but were still able to express the tragedy of Hamlet.