Sweet Prince

Spoiler alert – if anyone is going to see DT play Hamlet in Stratford, and doesn’t want to know about the production, do not read on.

I went to see David Tennant’s Hamlet in Stratford on Friday. It’s only about 10 months since I booked. I’ve been looking forward to it for so long, it seemed hardly believable that the day had arrived, and now I’m back home, it seems hard to believe that it’s happened.

I’d been a bit worried as the RSC had started to send out emails to ticket holders to tell them how to behave in a theatre and that they could not get any Doctor Who merchandise signed at the stage door. I’d also worried about the ‘Doran’ factor, as he’s never been my favourite director. But we got our frocks out, had a nice meal, and headed down Waterside to the Courtyard Theatre.

Into the auditorium, we were sitting round to the side of the thrust stage, which mean that we lost some of the visual impact of the reflective back drop, but gained in being close to the action.

The production was in modern dress, which for the most part worked well. They did Hamlet’s first entrance incredibly well, for I had feared there might be spontaneous applause, but because he entered as part of a group, for a moment you didn’t see him, and when you did, the action had continued, and the moment passed.

He looked so young, the grief stricken boy, so still in the midst of all the celebration, and literally rocking with grief in ‘Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt’. I loved him in the early part of the play, through the encounter with the Ghost, which clearly unhinged him briefly*.

Yet one or two soliloquies went for very little. Every actor must find it daunting to step onto a stage and start ‘to be, or not to be’, but it was difficult to tell what the intention was here. There were flashes of brilliance about this Hamlet, but there were also significant problems of pacing, and frankly odd cutting decisions.

Sometimes the action would seem to plod along, and then it would pick up speed and go really quickly. I thought DT was excellent in the scene with the players, fast, energetic and thoroughly coherent, and thought the dumb show very effective, and sufficiently different to the play to make me not wonder why Claudius doesn’t react to the dumb show. I absolutely loved how he mouthed ‘his’ speech along with the player, watching the performance, and Claudius’s reaction. And yes, I did love him in tux and bare feet!

Act 1 ended on a cliffhanger, just as Hamlet is about to kill Claudius at prayer. It seemed a brave decision, and was at least different, and made me go ‘gosh, I didn’t expect that’, but, by picking up from exactly the same moment at the start of Act 2, I felt the momentum was lost. It would have been better, as was suggested, to go back to the beginning of the speech – maybe they’ll change it during the previews?

I haven’t said a great deal so far about Patrick Stewart as Claudius, and that’s because I found it a difficult performance to judge. He was beautifully spoken, yet I couldn’t see anything of the political animal, or the ‘smiling damned villain’ about him. I thought Penny Downie was an excellent Gertrude, however. Utterly destroyed by the end. It’s a difficult part as Shakespeare doesn’t really give her the words after the closet scene to show how she responds to Hamlet’s request, so it has to be there in the actor’s performance.

Act 2 felt more disjointed than Act 1, perhaps because Hamlet is off stage for a significant period. ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ (my favourite soliloquy) went for nothing and Hamlet was wearing a frankly hideous costume, where he looked like he’d strayed onto the stage from the local ‘global gathering’ festival, complete with back pack and sleeping bag!

Having kept in the ambassadors to Norway, the production then dispensed with Hamlet’s report of the journey to England, and the attack by pirates, so when we got to ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead’ you didn’t know what had happened to them. Similarly, we got all of Osric (truly, I never realised there was that much to Osric). Having slowed the pace right down again, the production then fairly galloped through the last scene, once again cutting some of Hamlet’s final speeches, and ending on ‘flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’ with Fortinbras standing outside the huge doors.

So, my overall response? It’s a good Hamlet, it will please the million, and hopefully encourage those who are seeing it for the first time to see more Shakespeare. There is nothing to offend (well, maybe the cuts) but there isn’t as yet anything that makes you hold your breath. It will improve if some of the problems of pace and cutting are ironed out. David is a very good Hamlet, with the potential to be a great Hamlet. I look forward to reading the reviews, and seeing it again once it has settled into the repertoire.

Afterwards, we did check out the stage door, but it was crazy. Some people actually squealed at the sight of him, and they had to have barriers in place. I didn’t even try to get to the front, just snapped a couple of photos over others heads. It’s the long game.

* For the record, I don’t like a ‘mad’ Hamlet, but I don’t mind one temporarily unhinged by grief and his encounter with the supernatural.