Hamlet: William Shakespeare, RSC @ RST, Stratford Upon Avon, 5☆☆☆☆☆. Review: Roderick Dungate, AD Performance 8 March 2025.
Photo Credit: Marc Brenner.
Hamlet: William Shakespeare
RSC @ RST, Stratford Upon Avon
5☆☆☆☆☆. Review: Roderick Dungate, AD Performance 8 March 2025
“Top Notch Team, Top Notch Production.”
It is absolutely thrilling to see a highest quality team create for us this bold, insightful, modern Hamlet production.
There has been much talk of its on-ship setting; placing Hamlet’s world in this isolated universe makes complete sense. To tie it in with the Titanic (reality and film) is bold but carries great power. More of this later.
Hauling us through this corrupt world is Luke Thallon’s tortured Hamlet. Right from the start it is as clear as can be to us that this Hamlet teeters on the edge of a major mental breakdown. Thallon handles the text with great skill and range; his unrelenting nervous energy creates a Hamlet who is touchingly vulnerable. We share his anguish.
One of the elements which enhances Rupert Goold’s direction is the space he gives the play to live its own life and open up revelations.
Nowhere could this be clearer than in an often under-valued scene in which Hamlet accuses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of playing him as they would a pipe. In this production, it stands as Hamlet’s moment of greatest self-knowledge. And then segues beautifully into ‘To be or not to be’; Thallon takes his at great speed, the complex thoughts tumbling out of him fully formed. Stunning.
It could appear that Anton Lesser is under used as the Ghost. But he also plays the Player King, and the ‘gravedigger’ reimagined for the marine setting. He plays all these characters with gravitas and an appropriate elegance; in addition, the effect of unifying them with a single actor is to bring an unknowable, inexpressible fatalism to the story.
Es Devlin has designed a ship deck that is totally flexible for all the action; it is able to make tangible the falling-apart of this Elsinore.
Goold cuts the final Fortinbras scenes, not only because they are fairly meaningless to a modern audience, but also because this enables his coup de grace.
The play ends with Hamlet’s prescient ‘The rest is silence’, Horatio’s beautiful image of ‘flight of angels’, and the stage picture; Hamlet standing with outstretched arms embracing his end; reminds us of a scene from the Titanic film. Both pictures are powerful images, signifying the power of the human spirit to overcome evil, a hope for a better world.
One technical point is worth mentioning; a point I have mentioned before. The RSC audio describers are the best you can get, highly skilled. But the RSC should enable them to overcome a problem; often the audio description is drowned out by the music or other effects. I have wondered sometimes if this is just a problem to me but at this performance I heard another AD user comment about the same point. Could the various teams come together to carry out better sound level balancing?
Cast
Hamlet – Luke Thallon
Claudius – Jared Harris
Gertrude – Nancy Carroll
Ghost/Player King – Anton Lesser
Polonius – Elliot Levey
Laertes – Lewis Shepperd
Ophelia – Nia Towle
Horatio – Kel Matsena
Rosencrantz – Chase Brown
Guildenstern – Tadoe Martinez
Marcellus – Jack Myers
Barnardo – Joe Usher
Francisco – Evan McCabe
Player Queen – Miranda Colchester
Priest/Cornelius – James Solob Kelly
Voltemand – David Mara
Fist Player/Ensemble – Jessica Temple
Ensemble – Shailan Gohil/Sophie McIntosh/Ed Mitchell
Creatives
Director – Rupert Goold
Set Designer – Es Devlin
Costume Designer – Evie Gurney
Lighting – Jack Knowles
Composer & Sound Designer – Adam Cork
Voice & Text – Emma Woodvine
Audio Describers – Gethyn Edwards & Carolyn Smith