purged says Michael Hurst. Picutre/Paul Estcourt
05.17.2003
By PETER CALDER
These are serious weapons. The playwright has asked for "foils" - the light, slender, flexible rapiers of courtly combat - but the
two men moving across the rehearsal floor, in and out of the slanting beams of morning sun, are, quite literally, heavily armed.
They swing big broadswords - even the back-up daggers in their left hands are more than half a metre long - and although they
work slowly, counting their blows as they go, the weaponry whistles through the air as they twist and swirl.
The blades, the handsome handiwork of Weta Workshops who armed everyone in The Lord of the Rings movies, are safely
blunt. But they are capable of crushing the skull of any bystander who gets in the way.
Little wonder then that the older of the two combatants implores the rest of the 16 on stage to "be aware of the danger, be more
aware than with anything you have ever done before".
Barely two weeks out from opening night - when these weapons will be wielded fiercely and fast - director Michael Hurst is
tackling the climactic final scene of the great Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet, in which he will play the lead role.
He's in his element: a former provincial fencing champion and exponent of karate, he's an expert in stage combat who is often
hired to train actors to fight. But the swordfight with Laertes (Kip Chapman) with which he has started his day through the entire
rehearsal period, is just part of the scene's exacting choreography. Hurst is also working out how to move the entire cast around
and retain the dramatic momentum as the play remorselessly doubles its body count to eight.
Hurst, unquestionably our finest and most versatile male actor, has established himself as one of our most adventurous and
exciting directors of Shakespeare. And to watch him at work is to see instinct and intellect combine in a way which makes effort
seem effortless. He may look like one who's making it up as he goes along - in a sense he is - but his invention is underpinned by
a sure sense of stagecraft and driven by a love for the grandly theatrical.
It's a hunger for that theatricality which has persuaded him to take on, for the second time, one of the theatre's titanic roles.
Hamlet is the first production of the newly formed Large Group, a partnership between Hurst and associate director Christian
Penny. Penny, who teaches at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School in Wellington, worked with Anna Marbrook under the
banner Theatre at Large in the early 1990s, staging dazzlingly inventive pieces like The Butcher's Wife and Henry 8. The pair had
long wanted to work together and Hurst, whose last Shakespearean role was in another self-directed Hamlet almost exactly nine
years ago, saw the tragedy as the ideal launching pad for an ensemble company which is intended to become part of the Queen
City's theatrical landscape. The Large Group, as its name implies, will stage two productions next year and three annually from
2005, concentrating on "big" work - Shakespeare, the Greeks and Brecht are the names Hurst mentions.
Hurst concedes that what he calls "epic" theatre is hard to mount in these budget-sensitive times.
"But I have this theory that if we don't let ourselves do these kinds of plays that pull that much out of us, we're missing out on
something," he says. "We need to see theatre that will make us weep and be purged. We don't see it enough. It's a health issue.
"How many plays do you go and see where you say, 'That was a great script; I could have watched it on TV.' This stuff, the
bigger epics, they are ritualistic, almost religious ... we don't have any of that. We have funerals, a wedding maybe. We have
vestiges of it. But we need these stories told and the theatre is the only place for it.
"I've always said that what theatre can offer that television and the movies can't is the experience of the actor going through it at
the same moment as everyone else, that wonderful sense of risk."
Hurst has come a long way since he last rehearsed the duel - his opponent in 1994 was Penny as it happens. At that stage he had
just begun playing the hero's sidekick Iolaus in the American TV show Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. That gig led to guest
appearances on the sister series Xena: Warrior Princess, to his first experiences behind the camera (he directed a dozen episodes)
and to a faintly disquieting level of devotion from fans of the cult TV shows (card-carrying, global-travelling members of the
Michael Hurst fan club will be prominent in the audience on Hamlet's opening night, you may be sure). Between times he has
directed a feature film (Jubilee) and the TV show Love Mussel (the last appearance of his good friend Kevin Smith).
