Ingmar Bergman's Production of Hamlet

• Stabs Polonius repeatedly, slashing at his body
• Hamlet's role as the play's moral centre
• The Lyttleton curtain went up, to reveal red plush curtains behind them
• ''To be or not to be'' is delivered to the Player King, almost as if Hamlet were a Method director confiding psychological motivation
• life as theatre, theatre as life
• certain actors to double up in different roles eg Claudius and gravedigger
• Claudius had mounted Gertrude from behind before the entire Danish court, and had performed the confession scene while alternately manhandling and fondling the Player Queen
• polite applause of the court
• highly emotional, modern-dress
• Fortinbras, strides in, accompanied by a black-garbed army of street warriors and has Horatio killed (offstage) and then unceremoniously disposes of Hamlet and the other dead, his stance and attitude fascistic rather than heroic
• nature of theatrical illusion
• Fortinbras' leather-clad soldiers, armed with machine guns, burst in and mowed down everyone in their way to the accompaniment of thunderous Danish rock music
• After Fortinbras television cameras and microphones of the obligatory press conference scene
• Wearing a black leather coat and sulking behind sunglasses, Hamlet sits silently as his uncle and mother display an open sexual voraciousness 
• Hamlet drags a black chair, which he slams down at dead centre before proceeding to turn his back on the debauched, ruby-clothed King and Queen
• Hamlet's disgust registers in the seemingly casual way he ignores them
• Ophelia's closeness to Laertes verges on the incestuous 
• Hamlet alternately embraces Ophelia and shoves her out of his grasp
• Player Prince, finding his milieu among the actors, even to performing a small victory dance when he captures the conscience of the king
• Ophelia carries not flowers but nails, as if to impale her antagonists
• Ophelia went barefoot and wore a blue slip
• Gertrude carefully prepared Ophelia with some lipstick, and a pair of red high-heeled shoes,
• Acting as our surrogate, Ophelia is often amazed at the events
• dream-like atmosphere of the production, in which the borders between the internal and external were erased
• 'Blood is the theme of this interpretation,'
• emphasises violence and Hamlet's powerlessness, both personal and political
• Claudius edged away from Hamlet, the Ghost entered, came up behind him, and pinioned his arms so that Hamlet could run him through more easily

Michael Bogdanov Peter Sellars and Mark Lamos