Pot-smoking prince as Hamlet

10 April 2012

Not since David Warner's crazy, mixed-up collegeboy prince for Peter Hall in 1965 can the Royal Shakespeare Company have mounted such a hip and thoroughly modern Hamlet. But the production's sensational blasts from the present never seem mere empty flashes in the pan. Whether they take the form of machinegun fire in the palace, pistol shots to finish off Polonius and Claudius, searchlights and spying video cameras, or even the joint the prince smokes, these devices are realistic signs of the way we live and die now.

Six months ago, when director Steven Pimlott first presented us with his born-again Hamlet at Stratford-upon-Avon I thought it a thrilling piece of stage-craft and craftiness, though lacking any basic concept. But in the dark light of New York's September terrorist attacks Pimlott's version of Hamlet, four-hours long and using an overlong text, strikes alarming chords of recognition. This production warns of the precariousness of regimes whether in the England of 1601 or anywhere in 2001. It shows with what ease power can be seized in societies where cowed people change their allegiance as briskly as their clothes.

Claudius appears as Denmark's newly-elected king to the accompaniment of wildly applauding, obsequious courtiers. His kingdom is poised for terrorist attacks in a first scene that crackles with tension and swivelling searchlights. The dark-suited courtiers are mindless, scuttling around to hide during the murderous finale or when Ben Meyjes's Laertes wields a machinegun. As Finn Caldwell's ridiculously mild- mannered Fortinbras arrives the courtiers applaud him just as they did Claudius.

Alison Chitty's set is a vast, empty box, with a walk-way thrusting into the auditorium and down which Christopher Good's hammily old-fashioned ghost comes walking. The isolation of Samuel West's Hamlet, who's first seen sitting alone in a hooded wind-cheater down in the dumps, and of Kerry Condon's wafer-thin, crop-haired Ophelia is forcefully emphasised in this setting. I admired West's clever performance at Stratford, but it now leaves me less impressed. His prince, who almost pulls a trigger on himself during his first soliloquy, is a composed, ironic depressive who has slipped into long-term brooding about the impossibility of changing the world.

It's his excessive composure that worries me. West interestingly makes Hamlet a calm ironist, a reasonable chap probably completing his PhD in Melancholia and the post-Prozac Generation at Wittenberg University. There's never real danger of this prince succumbing to mania or Revenger's breakdown. And his emotional outbursts, his despair in the sight of all the sullied sexy flesh and deception around, lack painful conviction. He keeps his equilibrium, remaining almost as cool as a cucumber. Yet Hamlet needs to be likened to a far hotter vegetable than that.

Whether meeting up with his father's ghost - who's far more terrifying than usual because he's so human - taking the moral high ground in his mother's boudoir, or rejecting Ophelia, West keeps his grip instead of losing it. This performance style also characterises Marty Cruickshank's who lends the sensual Gertrude an air of prim froideur, Larry Lamb's bland, weird-accented Claudius and Miss Condon's mild Ophelia.

It's Alan David's superlative Polonius, a wily fixer and schemer, basking in smugness, who best represents the timeless, brutal setup that Pimlott thrillingly anatomises.

Hamlet

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in