Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican on 23 October 2015

This production is directed by Lyndsey Turner and designed by Es Devlin, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet, Anastasia Hille as Gertrude, Ciarán Hinds as Claudius and Jim Norton as Polonius.

Anticipation was almost ridiculously high because of Benedict Cumberbatch's huge popularity - tickets sold out within hours over a year before the first performances. Early previews received very mixed responses, not least because of some baffling rearrangements and cuts to the text (though the full text is very rarely performed by anyone). Notoriously, the play began with the 'to be or not to be' speech, though by the time of the official first night this famous soliloquy was placed later (but still, earlier than usual). Reviews of the finished product praised Cumberbatch but found fault with various aspects of the production. 

All this publicity tended to dampen my expectations, but in the event this was a fascinating and at times very powerful interpretation of 'Hamlet'. Some of the textual decisions were questionable - why forego the opening scene which establishes so well a degree of nervousness and unease amongst mere guards? Instead we have immediately Hamlet's own nervousness as he reacts warily to Horatio's arrival, until he recognises his friend. But this is, above all, a play about Hamlet, and so perhaps the shift is justifiable.

After this prelude, the main action begins with the feasting scene, and the visual spectacle of the Elsinore court is revealed - a splendid and baroque affair with a grand staircase, huge family portraits on the walls, and great double doors leading off to yet more spacious rooms beyond, and all coloured a rather unexpected blue. The effect is breathtaking, emphasising rather than trying to hide the sheer size of the Barbican stage. Despite the apparent awkwardness of imagining that all the scenes could conveniently and convincingly take place in this grand palatial foyer, they did indeed occur there without much problem. To begin, there was a long dining table, and Hamlet gave his first soliloquy with all the court around him, he spotlit and agile, and they in shadow moving in extreme slow motion (brilliant choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui), while the walls glowed spectrally. (This technique was used in later scenes as well.) Flunkeys removed the table for the ghost scene; later officious looking office desks were wheeled in; later again Hamlet 'went mad' in a toy castle he dragged in while dressed as a soldier, and eventually the players erected their travelling theatre, left fortuitously as the arras behind which Polonius fatefully hides.

Benedict Cumberbatch presented an attractive, articulate and passionate Hamlet, speaking the lines with beautiful precision. Anastasia Hille's Gertrude was surprisingly sympathetic, and her account of Ophelia's death was sincere and moving, while the Claudius of Ciarán Hinds was clearly a canny and ruthless politician as much as a wicked uncle. He handled the contrition speech extremely well, considering that the theory behind it is hardly understood these days. Polonius was suitably officious; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern believably out of their depth (and somehow managing to look like the young Simon and Garfunkel); Horatio credibly the one firm friend. Ophelia was not so successfully portrayed - one did not get the sense of betrayed innocence that should be clearly part of the cause for her breakdown. Laertes, performed by the understudy, rose to the occasion commendably well.

The military-political side of the play was more prominent in this production due to the retention of the scenes dealing with embassies to Norway and a sharp focus on the movements of Fortinbras and his army. This was matched by the bleakness of the second half. At the close of the Hamlet-Gertrude interview, the doors blew open and flurries of dust blew onto the stage. After the interval, the set was revealed with heaps of debris piled up and overflowing - a visual reminder of the increasing chaos of both the political situation (the consequence of Polonius's death and Laertes' return) and of Hamlet's own predicament. Even the gravedigger could seem not out of place in a space that seemed more of a ruin than a palace.

Overall there was a rugged splendour to this production. Though Hamlet was obviously the person to watch, the space signified a social setting for the action; there were always people moving about there according to their own purposes, thoroughly familiar with their surroundings, not at all looking like supernumaries dragged in to fill up an over-large set. This meant that it was always easy to follow the plot, despite the comings and goings of the minor characters, while the principals had a command of the stage that allowed the audience to concentrate fully on their tangled and disastrous situation.