ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS: INTERIORS

Onscreen and onstage, Sandra Hiller probes her characters with unusual depth.

- REBECCA MEAD

In 2019, Sandra Hüller, one of Germaactors, starred as Hamlet in a production at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, in the Ruhr Valley. For most performers, the part is challenge enough. But as Hüller prepared for the role with the theatre's artistic director, Johan Simons, their discussions kept drifting to the character who animates Hamlet's fantasies of revenge: his father's ghost. In most stagings, ghastly makeup and lighting convey that the character is spectral. Could this lingering spirit be conjured without melodramatic clichés? Simons and Hüller agreed that it would be potent for the father to rise from within the son-speaking through him. As Simons recently described the conceit, "The father is so deep in your soul that you can't get away from him he is always in you."

In the opening scene of the modern-dress, German-language production, Hüller stood alone onstage, her hands hanging uselessly by her sides, her eyes downcast. In a trembling near-whisper, she spoke lines that Shakespeare originally wrote for Hamlet's friend Horatio: "If there be any good thing to be done,/That may to thee do ease and grace to me,/ Speak to me." Hüller smiled faintly to hold back tears, and her voice broke as she muttered, "You are here, you are here."