Presque Hamlet

Created twenty-five years ago, Presque Hamlet is a manifesto in more ways than one: not only does it speak to the importance of taking on and reviving an artist's repertoire, but also to Dan Jemmett's interest in Shakespeare's work, which he willingly approaches by tangent, making the classic a space for complicity with the audience, a place of memory to savor and play with.

In this lecture-show on Hamlet, Gilles Privat, a leading actor in French-speaking Switzerland who has played many of the great roles in the repertoire, from Arnolphe to Cyrano, investigates the mysteries of this Elizabethan play and its central character. Alone on stage? Almost, but not quite, as the ghost of Hamlet's father and the gravediggers, Gertrude, Guildenstern, Ophelia and his family are summoned in turn, in a game that opens the door to our imaginations, so much so that the stage is populated and recomposed at will. An upright piano, a tea service, velvet curtains or a skull under a puppetized cloth, and the magic works instantly.