Tom Albrecht as Hamlet

Canadian Actor of Stratford Festival, NY Fringe and Roxy Theatre

Apr 17, 2008

The Roxy Theatre stage must be like a second home to Tom Albrecht - asked in 2007 by Owen Sound Little Theatre director Michael Rea to play the title role in Hamlet.

Tom Albrecht, throws himself into every role with gusto, so since the summer of 2007, life has literally become... To Be or Not To Be ..

Albrecht prefers to mix it up on the theatre boards, from occasional television spots and “off off off” theatre work in Toronto and New York Fringe Fests, to playing Thomas Cranmer in 2004's Henry VIII at Stratford, as understudy for company colleague Brian Tree.

Albrecht began studying for the role of Hamlet in the spring of 2007 while playing World War I poet Wilfred Owen in Stephen MacDonald’s gripping war piece Not About Heroes.

Albrecht moved to Owen Sound to immerse himself in the role Hamlet and now, a year later, the time has come. Not surprisingly Albrecht is tired, yet thrilled to play this coveted role.

I have had this conversation before, many seasons back when Colm Feore played Hamlet at the Stratford Festvial. How did you get past the "Oh My God I am playing Hamlet" thing?

“First of all, one does not tend to be as talented as Mister Feore.I have tried to put it out of my melon and approach it like any other part. I do my work to the best of my ability and let come, what comes.”

People debate about this play so much including how to understand the piece. How do you understand Hamlet?

“That’s – a tough one. Because there are so many sides, there are so many facets that I feel at times like an inexperienced diamond cutter. Here is a beautiful gem that I am trying to put a polish on and the more you look at it, the more you work on it, the more you realize that there are colours in that diamond, sparkles that I am unable to bring out, but I just try my best. It’s one of those things that I feel has raised me simply by the attempt”.

Do you go by that old acting adage – “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.” Do you get your inspiration from the text?

“Yes, I also did a lot of reading on criticism – people like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A.B.Taylor, Harold Bloom and George Bernard Shaw. These are really smart people, and it behooves one to take a look at what they have to say and then and assimilate that into my understanding.”

Hamlet is provocative, stimulating, infuriating… the audience is thinking. Why does Hamlet delay in his task to kill Claudius? He has no trouble killing Polonius.

“Hamlet is such a smart man that I think it is one of those things that could be done by any blunt instrument and that’s not my idea. I have taken that from someone, and that seems almost beneath him. He would far rather talk philosophy; far rather engage in battles of wit. He would far rather watch a play and discuss theatre and work on theatre than plunge a knife between someone’s ribs. I think it is not an excuse that Hamlet creates for himself but something that does not take his attention with the same grip that other things do.”

Does not killing Claudius have something to do with Hamlet and his mother Gertrude and that much-debated "Oedipal" complex?

"I have read about this, but to me it is not there. How Hamlet speaks so vehemently against Claudius and his mother’s incest seems to me an instant rebuttal of any sort of "Oedipal" thing within him. Hamlet is not jealous of his own father or their relationship, Old Hamlet’s and Gertrude’s, so it’s something that for me, his relationship with his mother and his ill treatment of her, comes rather from a place of being horribly, horribly hurt by her and her actions. Hamlet tries to work out this problem with Gertrude, because that’s something that I think the closet scene is, it‘s a working through of problems between two people that have great love for each other. Only people with great love for each other have the ability to hurt each other as deeply as those two do.”

Gertrude is strong in one way and weak in another because what she really wants to do is have a united family. Very modern for her son – “I hate my new stepfather” and maybe Gertrude is trying to be peacemaker.

“Yes, definitely. Gertrude is in some ways, effective at that – in Act 1, Scene II, that first Great Court scene – but in other ways she won’t take the guff that Hamlet gives her and it is much more than just “guff”; it’s almost a spitting in the face. Hamlet chooses the play to play before them; he works with those actors. He takes that mirror and holds it right up to Gertrude’s face.”

Part Two - Tom Albrecht talks about why the "Play is the thing, wherein he'lll catch the conscience of the King"

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