Eddie Izzard is bringing a one-woman version of Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet to the Sydney Opera House this coming week, taking on all 23 characters of the play herself. The production, which even includes a sword fight, is part of a run that is travelling across Australia after what she describes as massive success elsewhere with the show.
Izzard is widely known for her legendary comedy, with routines that audiences still quote, from Cake or Death to the evil giraffe and the Death Star Canteen. For this project she sets the comedy aside, although she is quick to point out that drama is far from new territory for her. She has been performing drama since 1993, more than 30 years, and was nominated for a Tony on Broadway for her dramatic work.
The format requires her to spin rapidly from one character to the next across the entire tragedy. She notes that solo performances of major works have become increasingly common, with performers from Britain, America and elsewhere mounting one-person shows, and that a solo Hamlet, in her view, is no longer such an unusual proposition for audiences today.
The sword fight is one element she feels well prepared to handle. Izzard explained that she directed Three Musketeers when she was younger and spent four years as a street performing act on the streets of Covent Garden in London, where she worked as a sword fighter. That background, she suggested, feeds directly into staging the duel that closes the play.
Carrying every role at once can also produce unusual exchanges with the audience. She recalled one heckle during a performance when a spectator shouted out, get him Hamlet, clearly not taking the side of Laertes in the climactic confrontation. The moment underlined the slightly surreal challenge of playing both sides of a fight alone on stage.
This is not the first time Izzard has played multiple parts in a single solo show. She previously performed an acclaimed one-person version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Both that production and this Hamlet were adapted by her older brother, a long creative partnership she likened to the working relationship between the Coen brothers.