HAM, the Hamlet-skewering new project from theatre-making duo Hotter Project (Ell Potter and Mary Higgins – whose chemistry here is, as elsewhere, astounding), arrives at an interesting time.
Exploring one Gen Z/ Gen Alpha cusper’s eco-grief, it lands at a moment when the results of global warming (see: wildfires and heatwaves, everywhere) are more noticeable than ever, but the cultural movement towards reducing waste, going vegan, and eschewing consumerism in the name of Mother Earth has largely petered out.
This makes the play’s central drama – the deterioration in common ground regarding the climate and animal consumption between the show’s adolescent Hamlet and his plummy Gen X mother – feel a bit outdated, passé even, like many a ‘topical’ drama exploring ‘ youth issues’ greenlit by TV execs. (In case you hadn’t noticed, the Greta Thunbergs of this world are a dying breed and the red-faced fervour of her ilk has been washed away by a typhoon of apathy, AI data centres, and protein-maxxing.)
It’s all oddly nostalgic, including the looped footage of pigs’ bodies falling limp post-electrocution or sheep’s necks spurting blood as they’re hacked in a slaughterhouse. To the uninitiated, it may be grotesque, yes. But it will also be familiar to anyone who lived through the great vegan reckoning (and subsequent art school degree shows) of the mid-2010s student movement.
The play’s strength, then, is in its exploration of its Hamlet’s impotence and inability to change the world around him, not even his own mother. As an audience, we see the futility of his efforts and come to a slow, guided acceptance that the Good Life promised to us and to prior generations of Westerners is done.
Sooner or later, we’ll have to try and make meaning from its ashes.
HAM, Summerhall, until 30 Aug, 7.30pm