HAMLET.

London

HAMLET
by William Shakespeare

Old Vic Theatre
Mon-Thu 7pm Fri-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2pm
Runs 3hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 060 6628
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 April

A fresh, lucid, fluid and invigorating production.John Gunter makes Elsinore a place of high spaces, passages, stairway and many doors. It's a public place, cold and grey under Paul Pyant's plain white lighting. Comfort only flows in with modern furniture for Ophelia and Gertrude's bedrooms. Ophelia's is visited just twice. First when, as a green girl' - literally in her school uniform - she's laughing at big brother Laertes' sullen discomfort as dad Polonius inflicts advice on him, the second when her returned brother receives the news of her death.

Tom Mannion's excellent Claudius mixes the practical operator wiping up blood, thinking of exculpating himself and Gertrude from the political consequences of Polonius' murder while his wife's still recovering from the shock of Hamlet's visit. Mannion finds an astonishing vocal array for Claudius' prayer, from horror through hope to resignation. He will stay as he is, his manner staying sleek as he beats Hamlet up.

Imogen Stubbs puts on a fine show of smiling through grief, but relaxes happily when the public aren't prying. During The Mousetrap' mime-show she becomes wary at the Player Queen's remarrying. Stubbs charts Gertrude's descent into distraction from Polonius' death and through watching the Ophelia's decline. She separates from her new husband as his smooth brutality becomes apparent, to the extent that drinking the poisoned wine is deliberate assertion after Claudius has publicly rebuked her. The role's so luminously handled the end's close to becoming the tragedy of Gertrude.

Yet Ben Whishaw makes an impact through a feigned madness seeming to grow from the first sight of his Hamlet - a curled, black-clad, knitted-cap wearing youth coiled round an inner fury. There's room too for the sweet prince, achieving smiling serenity on realising The readiness is all'. It's clear from his early calm towards Ophelia that his anger towards her transfers from resentment towards his mother. What's not quite there yet- is the sense of charisma or command (especially important in a production where modernity denudes social hierarchies). There's a vacuum on the return from England (the Yorick address is flat) because there's little feeling of what made up the noble mind before it got o'erthrown.

Samantha Whittaker is believable as a schoolgirl, dancing wildly by herself. It's the first time Ophelia's account of Hamlet's visit to her (we've just seen a brief, silent interpolation as he enters then calmly leaves her room) has seemed like a fabricated allegation. She writes the noble mind' speech as a letter left, teen fashion, to be found (similarly, Hamlet's insult towards Nicholas Jones' brisk, economical Polonius is shouted after him in schoolboy manner). Such freshness elements counterweigh limits in vocal richness and reflectiveness.

Hamlet: Ben Whishaw/Al Weaver
Claudius/Old Hamlet's Ghost: Tom Mannion
Gertrude: Imogen Stubbs
Polonius: Nicholas Jones
Laertes: Rory Kinnear
Ophelia: Samantha Whittaker
Horatio: Jotham Annan
Rosencrantz: Kevin Wathen
Guildenstern: Edward Hughes
Voltemand/2nd Player/A Gravedigger: Sidney Livingstone
Cornelius/Reynaldo/Gravedigger's Mate: Jack Laskey
Marcellus/1st Player/A Priest/A Captain: James Simmons
Barnardo/Osric: Samuel Roukin
Francisco/4th Player/Fortinbras: Tom Mison
Reynaldo/3rd Player/Gravedigger's Mate: Al Weaver
A Gentlewoman/3rd Player: Lewis Barfoot

Director: Trevor Nunn
Designer: John Gunter
Lighting: Paul Pyant
Sound: Fergus O'Hare
Composer: Steven Edis
Associate Costume: Mark Bouman
Movement: Kate Flatt
Voice: Patsy Rodenburg
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
Assistant director: Daniel Kramer

2004-04-30 01:47:05