Creator: Dickie Beau
Director: Jan Van Den Bosch
A lip-synched Hamlet may not sound like a thrilling night at the theatre. Fortunately, Dickie Beau is more interested in the actors who have played the most famous of all Shakespeare’s characters rather than the Prince of Denmark himself. However, what starts as a wry and camp look at the likes of John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier turns out to be a delicate eulogy for one actor in particular, almost now forgotten.
But Beau starts off with the song YMCA. Sitting behind a screen, we see his shadow stretching in time to the music as if he is getting out of bed in the morning, but he still manages to carve out each of the letters of the title of the iconic Village People track. Dressed either in running clothes like one of the 118 118 guys from the early 2000s or in a dressing gown redolent of luvvie actors, Beau steps out onto a stage littered with mannequin limbs.
The first ten minutes are confusing and it takes a while to adjust to Beau’s lip-synching as he simultaneously moves the props around the stage. It’s not clear, at first, whose voices he is lip-synching to. However, the narrative clears when a film appears above the stage and four versions of Beau mime the words of creatives such as directors Richard Eyre and Sean Mathias and actor Ian McKellen. They start to discuss one of the most famous productions of Hamlet.
The story of Daniel Day-Lewis abandoning the role mid-performance is a familiar one. At the National Theatre in 1989 real life and fictional drama merged when Day-Lewis (called just ‘Dan’ by Eyre) saw the ghost of his father on stage. However, in relating this story Beau provides a new viewpoint, that of someone backstage who was responsible for ‘Dan’s’ costumes. This man tells a very funny the-show-must-go-on tale and Beau lip-synchs to the recording of the interview while brandishing a pair of mannequin arms which illustrate comically the words spoken. It’s a delightful way in which to guide the audience to the real heart of the show.
The notoriety given to Day-Lewis’s sudden exit has hidden for years a more tragic story, it too about a man who once played Hamlet. It would be unfair to give too much detail here about Ian Charleson, an actor that once distanced himself from his first film Jubilee because it was directed by queer activist Derek Jarman. That story is often repeated in the papers but the story of his Hamlet never is. ‘Talking heads’ Eyre and McKellen begin to describe Charleson’s Hamlet while Beau busies himself tidying up the stage.
Beau gives himself surprisingly little to do. At times. as the film rolls, the show could smoothly run without him. But this odd directorial move has its rewards, Beau isn’t telling his own story so why should he get involved? His job is to remember or re-member, as the title suggests. The decision to remain detached but present is a selfless and generous one.
Re-Member Me continues to connect a younger generation to an older queer one in the same way as Channel 4’s It’s a Sin and Jack Holden’s stage play Cruise. Beau’s work may not have the direct impact of those shows, but instead, Re-Member Me is quiet and elegiac. Like Hamlet himself, Beau’s show grapples with mortality.
Runs until 17 June 2023
