A Narrative Called Cho Seung-woo... Finally Completed 'Hamlet' [On Stage]

Sold Out Within 10 Minutes of Opening Until the Final Performance
Positive Reviews Continue for Jo Seung-woo

?Seoul Arts Center

Actor Jo Seung-woo has taken the stage in the play Hamlet. It is his first time performing in a play since his debut. Jo Seung-woo is an actor who has created the phrase "Jo Seung-woo is a genre itself" by appearing in musicals, films, and dramas. Thanks to this, he is regarded as the only actor who has succeeded on stage, television, and screen. Since an actor’s breathing, vocalization, and movements change with each genre, receiving praise across genres is no easy feat. Therefore, the news that Jo Seung-woo would appear on a theatrical stage for the first time in 24 years since his debut was met with anticipated acclaim. It was almost inevitable that all performances, including the final show on November 17, sold out as soon as tickets went on sale.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a work that has been adapted and reinterpreted across various genres such as books, films, plays, and musicals for over 400 years. Because it is a long-loved piece, elements like stage design, lighting, and costumes inevitably become variables. Interpretations can vary greatly depending on how the director unfolds the characters and story, as well as the perspective of the audience watching the work. For this reason, Hamlet is constantly reinterpreted. The power of the actor taking the stage is inevitably significant. Since the audience already has an imagined image of Hamlet in their minds, the weight, pace, and direction of the work can change depending on how the actor expresses, delivers lines, and moves.

"With just eye contact alone, or a single short line, you can instantly captivate people’s hearts. As long as there is sincerity! This is the power that theater, that actors, possess! To reflect human life exactly like a mirror! How great and wonderful is that? So please, show human beings as truly human. Speak real words. Not 'theater lines,' but words spoken by real people!" (From the play Hamlet)

Jo Seung-woo captivates the audience’s hearts instantly, just like the lines from Hamlet. With a single short line or just his gaze, he stops the breath of both the stage and the audience. Even without musical numbers, he skillfully modulates temperature, pace, and intensity according to each scene. It is as if every word and every emotion carries a musical note, rhythmically pulsating.

In scenes expressing anger and revenge toward his uncle Claudius, who murdered his father and the former King of Denmark, as well as resentment and sorrow toward his mother and queen Gertrude, who married that uncle, and when standing before Ophelia, Jo Seung-woo gracefully unfolds the complex emotional curves. Through slyness and seriousness, anguish and conflict, sorrow and desperation, anger and madness, he completes the deep emotional narrative of Hamlet that had previously been unseen and unfelt.

"Times have changed. Actors cannot move the true hearts of the audience by shouting unnecessarily, shedding fake tears, or overacting. Remember, theater is a mirror." (From the play Hamlet)

Director Shin Yoo-chung, who gained attention with works like Wife, Burnt Love, and Death of a Salesman, allows us to experience Hamlet from a more multifaceted perspective. The scene where Claudius and Gertrude order Hamlet’s friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet, and the scene where Polonius orders Reynaldo to spy on Laertes, who has gone to France, are presented in a single frame with overlapping dialogue. Additionally, the transitions between generations are woven throughout the play via the former King of Denmark and Hamlet, Polonius and Laertes, and the King of Norway and Fortinbras.

Although it is not a work to be enjoyed lightly, it is accessible even to theater beginners because you can see Hamlet and Claudius rather than Hwang Si-mok and Kang Won-chul from the tvN drama Stranger. Moreover, Jo Seung-woo’s Hamlet, showing different chemistry with actors such as Jung Jae-eun, Kim Young-min, and Baek Seok-kwang, makes the three-hour play feel like 30 minutes. From Man of La Mancha, Hedwig, Jekyll & Hyde, Sweeney Todd, Werther, to The Phantom of the Opera, Jo Seung-woo has reborn these characters with greater depth. If the emotions of Hamlet accumulate layer by layer in Jo Seung-woo, what kind of Hamlet will be born? Hamlet is just the beginning of Jo Seung-woo’s theatrical filmography.