Review by Simon Jenner, May 11th 2025
Every so often that overused phrase of Jan Kott’s – “Shakespeare our contemporary” – lies like truth. And a production reinvents a play to live, not simply entertain. That this is Hamlet is bold enough, especially in a play everyone tries to reinvent. Teatro La Plaza from Peru, with a cast of eight actors with Down Syndrome, achieve something astonishing. Affirmation against all odds takes on a work whose protagonist grows up, but grows up dead, as Richard Eyre once said. Beginning in 2019, this play has already toured over 40 countries and stopped over at the Barbican before arriving at Theatre Royal Brighton for a few performances. It’s directed by La Plaza’s founder Chela De Ferrari till May 11th. After which it proceeds to Toronto.
Jaime Cruz. Photo Credit: Teatro La Plaza.
There’s nothing remotely safe or easily curated about this 95-100 minute ride through a deconstructed Prince. People emerge laughing and crying. Most of all changed. Especially four of them, recruited for a remarkable scene. We start with a huge screening of a birth. This is a production with motive and cue too – and since Hamlet features a play within a play, adding a further layer fits as if designed to.
This production develops in lightning-strikes of key scenes from Hamlet itself. But these are preceded and surrounded by how these actors are going to address, rehearse, fail again and fail better, discuss their vulnerabilities, recount their marginalisation, their pathologizing and reduction. And finally stand out as individuals. That last might sound fatuous, but the way those with Down Syndrome are also generically lumped together is just one thing you’ll find blasted. “Get out of our way” shout the actors in chorus and alone. This is activism, and Hamlet’s the springboard.
That video (the striking work of Lucho Soldevilla) bursts into life and as often vanishes, with promises of kingship and a sudden coronation. And this is one of the most astonishing revelations. We take it for granted Hamlet is somehow shoved aside by his uncle. Why? The direct succession should be his alone. Yet what if Hamlet is born with Downs Syndrome, and has to fight literally for his identity before he can claim his kingdom?
Everything from a birth to an aquamarine drowning, pulses across upstage. With dramaturgy from Claudia Tangoa and Jonathan Oliveros y Luis Alberto León we’re introduced to the actors and their backstories. Some original lines are used, and often paraphrased, re-translated back into English with surtitles.
First (and main) Hamlet is Jaime Cruz, for four years an usher at the Theatre, and now a lead with a comedic but also intense energy. Both warm and confiding he’s the actor who radiates storytelling. At first though, he rejects his role as the crown is proffered about.
Photo Credit: Teatro La Plaza.
He’s matched with Cristina León Barandiarán, who’s both liberated yet role-confined, in her wide expressive range (especially in late scenes): this Ophelia, or Ofilia, is Hamlet’s lover – there’s explicit references and cajoling of neurotypical sexual voyeurism. The scene of the letter-return is charged with new meaning. Diana Gutierrez (full of wary energy), and the authority figure of Octavio Bernaza give societal, chilling reasons for the couple not to marry: not simply those of the play, freely enough given (the prince’s lack of choice) but of their mutual condition.
We’re always reminded that those playing the parts have to a degree suffered as the people they portray. That Hamlet himself may have been sidelined because he’s born with Downs Syndrome. We’re referenced back to that opening video birth-scene; then that parents after being horrified, are joyous. Not in this story.
Here some unrepeatable lines are given to speculating what the children of a Downs couple might be like. Again we’re slammed into worldwide prejudice. What’s true of Peru is as relevant here, and but for this kind of intervention, might always be. The play only highlights facts that don’t care for anyone’s feelings.
Cruz is the opposite of Octavio Bernaza, often slated for Claudius, with a skirling energy of his own, and a delight in darkening counsel. Yet each of these roles morph: everyone pitches at Hamlet. Hamlet is often said to be all of us, so why not radiate that throughout all the play’s on-stage protagonists? Each tinctured with the other part they play?
Photo Credit: Teatro La Plaza
Photo Credit: Teatro La Plaza
Lucas Demarchi, most often Horatio, the sole survivor is left literally and psychically at the periphery. At one point he trails a white squiggle of ribbon memorably around upstage, throbbing around like an electron. He’s both mercurial and detached, yet somehow the appalled witness. Manuel García exudes a brio and alone of the men projects a youthful detachment from fate.
There’s a fantastic voyage round the great “To be” moment, where Cruz calls up Ian McKellen in a recorded conversation (McKellen filmed) after a living board of previous Hamlets, and tries giving advice in Spanish. It’s both hilarious and infinitely touching. Then the great Olivier black-and-white wafts in and like a colossus or stone guest towers over Cruz. He puts it to the audience. The eight players take up the speech, parcelling it out like a manifesto.
With Álvaro Toledo as Player King and Barandiarán as Queen, there’s a degree of complexity and role-play of neurotypical and divergent. This morphs rapidly into the Ofilia suicide scene, where Barandiarán is spectacularly robed by a descending dress from the flies sheathing her in white against aquamarine water projected on the video. The exuberant Ximena Rodríguez and contained Gutierrez join Barandiarán as a trio of Ophelias.
Jesús Reyes’ lighting – whether from canny side-lighting cusping around halves of people like an errant moon, or from above, is like lunar caustic, strangely enchanted and troubled. Music switches from techno through Purcell, and witty use of 17th and 18th century British folksong arrangements. The uncluttered stage enjoys sudden crowding: the final scene’s banqueting, the video projection of a giant skull leering over silver goblets. Then there’s four trees, a singular selection from ourselves.
Just one parallel strikes me – also from Latin America, source of some of the most transformative theatre. That’s from Argentinian devisor/director Lola Arias, who created Minefield in 2016, where three UK and three Argentinians veterans from the Falklands War come together, portray their experiences and later friendships. Linking arms the six men advance “Would you go to war?” repeated at the audience. It arrived here at the Festival, before returning to the Royal Court. This Hamlet carries that charge and then some. It’s as if this incandescent octet are saying. “Don’t look at us. Look at you.” And the final moments meg it all. Overwhelming; outstanding.
Vocal Coach Alessandra Rodríguez, Choreography and Movement Mirella Carbone, Production Siu Jing Apau
Octavio Bernaza Photo Credit: Teatro La Plaza
