Moscow Art Theatre Production of Hamlet

Moscow Art Theatre Production Of Hamlet

The Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) production of Hamlet in 1911–12, on which two of the 20th century's most influential theatre practitioners—Constantin Stanislavski and Edward Gordon Craig—collaborated, is particularly important in the history of performances of Hamlet and of 20th-century theatre in general. Craig and Stanislavski were introduced by Isadora Duncan in 1908, from which time they began planning the production. Due to a serious illness of Stanislavski's, the production was delayed, eventually opening on 5 January 1912 . Despite hostile reviews from the Russian press, the production attracted enthusiastic and unprecedented worldwide attention for the theatre, with reviews in Britain's The Times and in the French press that praised its unqualified success; the production placed the Moscow Art Theatre "on the cultural map for Western Europe" and it came to be regarded as a seminal event that influenced the subsequent history of production style in the theatre and revolutionised the staging of Shakespeare's plays in the 20th century. It became "one of the most famous and passionately discussed productions in the history of the modern stage."