Interview with Hamnet director Erica Whyman
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Sian McBride
Directing a critically acclaimed bestselling novel for the West End wouldn’t be considered a relaxing experience for most people, but director Erica Whyman isn’t most people. As the former Deputy Artistic Director of The Royal Shakespeare company, she is used to wearing many hats (or should that be many coifs?) running one of England’s most famous, and much-loved theatres for the past ten years, and directing many of the critically productions that play there. ‘It's very, very nice because I'm just doing this. It feels like an amazing freedom!’
Erica’s production of Hamnet has already enjoyed a sold-out run at Shakespeare’s home of Stratford-upon-Avon and has recently received a six-week extension on its West End residency (before the curtain has even gone up.) The book the play has been adapted from has also received its fair share of successes, having sold over 1.5 million copies as well as winning the Waterstones Book of the Year, National Book Critics Circle Award and Women’s Prize for Fiction awards. Did Erica feel any pressure directing a play so many people have already ‘seen’ in their heads? ‘Oh, I mean, 100%! There’s a multitude of pressures, because it is so loved and loved by so many different people. I guess you have to just accept that you're not making the book onstage, you're adapting it. So, my responsibility now is to Lolita’s script. Maggie [O’ Farrell] has been an amazing collaborator, which has been very helpful when we invent something new. I feel an enormous responsibility to the readers of the book, but it's a new thing with its own life, its own structure, its own flavour.’
Erica is one of the books biggest fans, which is why she feels such responsibility and respect to the source ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it. I keep the audiobook on in the car, I have a copy on my Kindle, I have a copy in my bag all the time. The book is really kind of shuffled around with me last couple of years.” In fact, her love for the book is actually what brought it to the stage in the first place ‘I read it in lockdown whilst living in Stratford. I found it a completely devastating read, but also, somehow, reassuring. The themes of loss and isolation were so relevant, all these years later. I spoke to Greg Doran , who was the Artistic Director at the RSC at the time and said that we needed to adapt it. I think you just feel the theatricality of it in its bones, particularly as the story unfolds, where Maggie gets interested in theatre herself, and what the theatre might mean, and what telling a story in front of people might mean.’
That doesn’t mean that those unfamiliar with the novel, or even Shakespeare’s plays, will have a difficult time with the play ‘Lolita [Chakrabarti, the playwright who adapted O’Farrell’s book] and I were very keen to make the show accessible to everyone. We know that there are barriers in the way for some people. We all have to study Shakespeare at school, and that can be a very positive and wonderful experience for some, but for a lot of people it isn't. We didn't want anyone to feel as though this play required you to have some prior knowledge, you don't need to know story. You don't need to know anything about his life.
Though if you are a fan, there will be some hidden easter eggs ‘There’s a lot of tiny ones, for people who really like the hunt! There are small little phrases where someone will say something, and you’ll go ‘wait a minute, that sounds familiar’.
As well as subtle references, there are several themes from Shakespeare’s plays that crop up in Hamnet ‘He writes about family a lot, even when he's writing about kings and queens and tragic historical events. His plays centre around the intricacies of marriage and the complex relationships within the family unit. Our play is similar, it explores young love, a terribly difficult father-son relationship, and a really interesting mother-son relationship, as well as illness and death. All these subjects feel like the territory of Shakespeare's plays.
How different did Erica find directing Shakespeare’s personal life, as opposed to one of his famous works she is known for? ‘It’s the story of Anne, his wife, and of their family. William plays a big part, but it’s interesting to highlight the important people in his life, who have previously been forgotten and neglected. There’s a huge pleasure in telling the story of Anne, she is an amazing woman; incredibly strong, resilient, fascinating, and mysterious. When you're rehearsing a Shakespeare play the language is 400 years old and you spend a lot of time make sure you've understood the meaning and that the wonderful way in which he uses words, and the use of verse and rhythm and all sorts of rhetoric. The language of this play is very beautiful but extremely accessible and straightforward, which has made it slightly easier!
Has she also found West End rehearsal process easier, coming off the back of a hugely successful Stratford run? ‘It’s quite different. We've got a different shaped stage, which immediately raises lots of lovely questions about how to stage it, and what sort of pictures we'll make on it. We also have made a few adaptations in Stratford, so it's exciting for me to some refinements script, and being a little bit bolder in a few places. We've also got four new actors, which is great because they bring a fresh injection of energy and curiosity into it.
So, what can we expect to see from the West End run? It's a story about plague, about loss, about healing about trying to find a way forward, and it's a story of hope. Even when the worst happens, human beings have extraordinary resilience. And I guess what I think Maggie's getting at is that the theatre or, or the novel, is a place where you can tell stories and that those stories can actually, physically, help us to cope. It's an ultimately optimistic evening.