HAMLET. To 26 November.

Tour.

HAMLET
by William Shakespeare.

English Touring Theatre Tour to 26 November 2005.
then New Ambassadors Theatre London To 22 April 2006.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Tue & Thu 2pm.
Runs 3hr 20min One interval.

TICKETS: 0870 060 6627 (booking fee).
www.theambassadors.com (booking fee).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 September at Oxford Playhouse.

A Hamlet that's clearly defined and atmospheric.
This production has the hallmarks of director Stephen Unwin's work for English touring Theatre; clear, well-paced, perceptive - and minimal. A bare darkness persists beyond the opening battlements into the confined room where Claudius and Gertrude hold court on a simple wooden bench. When there's a door or window, it opens onto more blackness; many scenes take place in a void. Lighting, relentlessly white with hazy mist swirling in its beams, becomes merely darkness visible.

Against this only the Mousetrap' players and the final swordfight bring colour, and that's muted. There's an inevitability to this procession of black scenes, focusing the production's quiet intensity. Tragedy here lies in faith in the world's rationality. His mother's remarriage has made this clear to Hamlet even before his suspicions begin their journey to certainty with the Ghost's story of his murder. There is more to life than our philosophy tells us. It's there in the skull of Yorick and the cheerful mundanity with which Michael Cronin's Gravedigger treats death daily.

Horatio the scholar's brought close up to it when mad Ophelia advances on him, her lips wavering a micro—distance from his mouth, testing his intellectual detachment. Such insane physicality is distasteful to him, pushing him further towards emotional distress when presenting the closing account to Fortinbras.

Over-statement isn't Unwin's way and guilt emerges slowly, almost thoughtfully, in David Robb's Claudius, though his insistence on removing Hamlet at one remove, so to speak, is no less powerful. And Anita Dobson's Gertrude is a model of honesty becoming ever-more perplexed; the contrast between her responses and her new husband's is clear, as is her astonishment in repeating Hamlet's words to her: As kill a king?

There's a good coupling of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, innocents in the way of being devious, while Ed Stoppard's Hamlet engages in fiery communication with the audience throughout his soliloquies (if mainly with the centre stalls). He presents Hamlet's passion and mental alertness. What's not there yet is a below-the-surface existence, the sense of depths audiences don't fully penetrate. But it's a clear, direct performance that matches its production.

Barnardo/Cornelius/Captain: Martin Hodgson.
Francisco/Voltemand/Third Player: John Heffernan.
Horatio: Sam Hazeldine.
Marcellus/Fortinbras: Ross Waiton.
Ghost/Player King/Priest: Patrick Drury.
Claudius: David Robb.
Laertes: Ben Warwick.
Polonius/Gravedigger: Michael Cronin.
Hamlet: Ed Stoppard.
Gertrude: Anita Dobson.
Ophelia: Alice Patten.
Reynaldo/Player Queen/Osric: Richard Hansell.
Rosencrantz: Liam Evans-Ford.
Guildenstern: Rhys Meredith.

Director: Stephen Unwin.
Designer: Michael Vale.
Lighting: Malcolm Rippeth.
Sound: Dan Steele.
Music: Olly Fox.
Costume: Mark Bouman.
Fight director: Terry King.
Assistant director: Lucy Kerbel.
Associate designer: Charlie Cridlan.
Associate costume: Mia Flodquist.

2005-10-06 15:42:16