Review: Re-Memeber Me (Dickie Beau)

In 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis walked out of London’s National Theatre production of Hamlet mid-show, necessitating a desperate re-robing of ashen-faced understudy Jeremy Northam. Since that fateful incident almost three decades ago, the tale of Day-Lewis sighting his father’s ghost has become the stuff of theatrical legend.

What is less well remembered is the fate of Chariots of Fire star Ian Charleson, who also stepped once more unto the breach as the ill-fated Prince of Denmark. Arguably the most coveted role of all for a young actor, it was to be his last. Barely two months after the final curtain call the Scottish actor succumbed to an AIDS-related illness, insisting that the cause of death be announced to the media. Ever the performer, he even sang an elegy, via recording, at his own funeral.

No recording, however, was ever made of his Hamlet. And so the ghost’s cry of “remember me,” in Hamlet echoes through the ages, picking at the oft-ephemeral nature of the art form. Indeed, Charleson’s turn passed almost without criticism until co-stars insisted the then London Times theatre writer John Peter attend. Desperately moved by this failing royal, cast in the shadow between worlds, so, too, was Sir Ian McKellen.

All three men’s voices sing in the deeply affecting and ethereally haunting Re-Member Me by British lip-synch artist extraordinaire Dickie Beau. And it begins as something of a Shakespearean drag show.

At-first poppy and frolicsome, Beau lingers, Oz-like, behind a curtain. Mouthing in shadow to various Hamlets past, including Peter O’Toole, as they talk about their time in the Danish sun. The Village People blare and Ophelia gets stuck on “I” as disco lights command a large video screen above the quarter-circular stage littered with discombobulated mannequins.  

Emerging in running singlet, sweatband and short shorts, an early nod to Charleson, it’s as cheekily camp as it sounds, also drawing on pop culture drops from Darth Vader and Barbara Streisand. Also ghostly, four faces of Beau appear on the screen to mime alongside him, with the arch of a brow and the roll of an eye saying so much in silence too. Following both is a dexterous task worth the effort when the mirror reflects so much soul.

Fussing with the military garb of which Hamlet productions are so fond, Beau’s synching skills are magnificent as he assumes an exaggerated caricature of various disembodied voices: mostly men who have played the prince, and their notes on one another, but also those associated with their endeavour. Folks such as John Peter, Lewis’ dresser Stephen Ashby and Sir Richard Eyre, National Theatre artistic director during that unforgettable Hamlet. 

McKellan’s is probably the most recognisable, and certainly the most entertaining. There’s something remarkably disarming about his at times gossipy bitching, and then the armour chink as his insecurities let fly. His memories of Charleson, at first vague, deepen into something sublimely sad, and these closeted actors are joined by fellow queer and Prince, Sir John Gielgud.

As a show concerned with memory and legacy, there’s an unmistakable parallel with the silencing of othered voices. But Beau can breathe life back into those that have passed, and as the twilight of Charleson approaches, the audience – which began raucous – falls into hushed reverance.

Beau does not speak for the most part, beyond the flicks and flourishes of his body and facial expressions (and barring a certain soliloquy. No prizes for guessing which). A heavy crown to bear, he may never have been and is unlikely to become Hamlet, but his understanding of the role and its burden is undoubted, as is his wrestling with the burden of silence. 

Melbourne International Arts Festival presents Dickie Beau’s Re-Member Me, until 21 Oct at Arts Centre Melbourne