I really didn’t want to go to yet another production of Hamlet, especially after the RSC’s last attempt where the setting was a public school fencing hall, Hamlet middle aged and where the political backdrop of the play was omitted with the cutting of Fortinbras. I was fearful about what they would do this time. I should have paid more attention to the fact that it is directed by Simon Godwin whose outstanding Two Gentlemen of Verona was such a delight in 2014.
This is a fine production. Over an hour is cut and yet the cutting is seamless. No famous lines are omitted. The soliloquies are all there. And yet time passes quickly (except for the Players scene and the enactment of Priam) and my attention was held throughout.
The opening interpolation is masterful. The play opens on graduation day at the University of Wittenberg, establishing a multi-racial cast and where the only line is the play’s title. What a brilliant way of establishing that this is a contemporary play featuring young people. And the context is further established by the dumb show of the funeral cortege of Hamlet’s father. The battlements are manned by soldiers with machine guns. The ghost is smoke. A blood pact seals the silence of Marcellus, Barnardo and Horatio. When the ghost does appear he is indeed ‘strange’ with a Caribbean accent, in contrast to the African English of Claudius and Gertrude, his voice amplified by an echo chamber.
Horatio (Hiran Abeysekera) is a delightful young man, both modern and Elizabethan at the same time with his tiny earring in his left ear and Rosencrantz (James Cooney) and Guildenstern (Bethan Cullinane) are also delightfully youthful in their tourist garb. There is, of course, nothing gender specific that Guildenstern says and so the gender switch works perfectly. Gertrude (Tanya Moodie) is completely inscrutable. In more private moments she can’t keep her hands (and mouth) off Claudius (Clarence Smith) but in the more public ones her rather haughty distance is rather chilling.
Hamlet is an artist, the scenes with his street art and the link between his clothes and artwork are a most imaginative way of visualising the play’s verbal imagery. In a completely unexpected moment Hamlet shoots Polonius through the street art arras with a gun. This gun had previously been drawn to out attention because Hamlet treated it as a totem, unwrapping it, fondling it and then wrapping it up again.
The surprise continues with the interval placement after the line ‘And now I’ll do it’ as Claudius is attempting to pray. Not for a moment would anyone want to leave.
More delightful surprise interpretations occur after the interval. Instead of comparing Claudius to his father in the bedroom scene Hamlet compared himself to Claudius. When Hamlet appears in handcuffs on his way to England, it is obvious that he can’t trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; they have been dragooned into being his warders.
Laertes descends from a helicopter. Ophelia in her madness creates her dead father out of her clothes.
All of this, all of it interpreting the details of the text in a brilliant way, kept my attention and interest throughout. As did Paapa Essiedu’s acting as Hamlet. He was never dull, never long-winded, never tedious. Quite a triumph.
Designer Paul Wills created masses of costumes changes. The shoes are meticulously chosen and often informative. Despite the basic bare stage, the ‘set’ is constantly changing.
I think this production is a triumph. I loved it. I shall go again. Come and see it and make your stay complete with a stay at Moss Cottage. You can even taste the marmalade that won silver and bronze awards at this year’s World Marmalade competition.