Anyone who has watched one of MADC’s summertime Shakespeare plays understands the difference setting can make. While the company’s decades-long tradition is typically staged at San Anton Gardens, this year, due to renovation works, MADC has moved its outdoor Hamlet to Msida Bastion Historic Garden. For director and designer Michael Mangion, the new venue has changed far more than the view.
“Msida Bastion Historic Garden carries a weight that feels almost Shakespearean in itself,” he says.
“It’s a fortified garden built on layers of history, with centuries of occupation embedded in its walls. That sense of siege, of a world under pressure, speaks directly to what Hamlet is about.”
While the different setting “has pushed the production toward something more urgent and architectural,” Mangion is embracing the change as he both directs and designs the play.
“The two roles are in constant conversation,” he explains. “The designer in me proposes a world, and the director interrogates whether it serves the actors and the story.”
When the two disagree, he is firm about which he prioritises. “I’ve learnt to be ruthless with my own ideas. If a design choice is beautiful but makes a scene harder to play, the director wins. It means I carry two notebooks everywhere and I’m never quite off the clock.”
Msida Bastion Historic Garden began in the early 1800s as a cemetery, which was restored and reopened as a garden in 2002. The setting’s unique history means William Shakespeare’s famous play about death and ghosts will be performed among authentic 19th-century gravestones – an aspect Mangion is keen to lean into.
Indeed, he hopes audiences will be transported from the moment they cross the threshold. “I want that first glimpse to produce a kind of involuntary stillness – a moment where people stop arranging themselves in their seats and just look. The space should feel both familiar and slightly wrong, the way a dream feels when you’re inside it.”
“That sense of siege, of a world under pressure, speaks directly to what Hamlet is about”
Alex Weenink plays the title role. “Alex has an intelligence that never tips into cleverness,” Mangion says. “He can hold Hamlet’s contradictions without trying to resolve them too quickly, which is rare and essential.”
Joining Weenink in the company is Stephen Oliver as Claudius, and the voice of Manuel Cauchi as the Ghost, alongside Larissa Bonaci, Bernard Zammit, Jeremy Paul Grech, Eoin Kennedy, Maya Micallef Engerer, James Sultana, Jonathan Scicluna and Sarah Farrugia.
Working with the cast, Mangion says, has been “a reminder of how strong Malta’s pool of talent is.”
Two dance sequences complement the Shakespearean text, choreographed by Moveo Dance Company and featuring Moveo dancers Anna Friedrich, Edmilson Zammit and Pablo Daniel Silva Gonçalves.
Four centuries on, the story still speaks to Malta’s audiences, Mangion believes.
“The play is about what happens when the institutions that are supposed to protect you are the very things that are rotten – not an abstract concern for anyone living in the world right now.”
Hamlet’s hesitation is equally relatable, he goes on.
“Hamlet’s paralysis isn’t weakness, but the recognisable struggle of someone who wants to do the right thing in a world that makes the right thing almost impossible to identify.”
Having trimmed the near four-hour text to just over two hours “without losing its essence, rhythm and meaning”, Shakespearean newcomers need not be daunted, says Mangion. “This is a production made with enormous love for the form and for this island. Open-air Shakespeare in Malta has a long tradition of being done beautifully, and we feel both the privilege and the responsibility of that. It is also extremely accessible – so it’s a perfect first production to watch if you’re new to Shakespeare. Come ready to be moved.”
MADC’s production of Hamlet by William Shakespeare performs at the Msida Bastion Historic Garden, Vincenzo Dimech Street, Floriana, at 8.30pm on July 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 (no performance on July 22). This production is suitable for audiences aged 12 and over. Tickets available at www.madc.com.mt.
