'Suit the action to the word, the word to the action...'

After three months, I made a return visit to Stratford at the weekend, seeing Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Hamlet. I’ve given myself a few days to reflect on it. Partly because of work, but also because I wanted it to settle in my mind.

When I first saw Hamlet, some of the directorial decisions and cuts jarred to the extent that they marred the production, and I marked David Tennant’s Hamlet as a ‘very good Hamlet, with the potential to be great’. This time, the choices and cuts didn’t bother me in the main, as I was expecting them, and therefore they didn’t detract from what was happening on stage.

And what was happening on stage was amazing. There was theatrical magic in the air, and he was everything that I’d felt he could be. It was like hearing some of the speeches for the first time. Lines I can repeat in my head along with the actors sounded new minted. He actually made me cry in the soliloquies, even ‘to be or not to be’! For a self confessed ‘theatre snob’ who is incredibly difficult to please when it comes to Shakespeare, it was mind blowing.

He seemed so young, and so vulnerable in his performance, heightening the tragedy of wasted potential. His interaction with both father and mother was very emotional, with the closet scene immensely powerful.

The strength of his performance did mean that others got less attention, though Penny Downie, Oliver Ford Davies and Peter de Jersey all impressed me. I couldn’t find the ‘smiling damned villain’ in Patrick Stewart’s Claudius though, apart from one or two flashes.

I still don’t think the placing of the interval added anything, and I still miss the pirates, ‘let be’ and Fortinbras at the end, but I almost cried as he tenderly stroked Yorick’s skull, and was in tears throughout the last scene – hence my issue with the abruptness of the ending. Yes, the rest really is silence after the loss of such a sweet prince, but I need time to mourn before the cast come on to take their bow.

As the lights went down, I glanced at Corinne. ‘I’m going to stand’, ‘Me too’, and we were on our feet. He deserved it. And he knew – he could tell that it had been a good one, as you could see it in his grin, and his face. It was once of those theatrical experiences that I want to save forever, and it’s part of the magic, but also the transience, of theatre that I can’t and it has to live in my memory*.

I don’t have the words to capture it really. It’s still not the greatest production of Hamlet that I’ve seen, but on Saturday night’s performance, he has become my best ever Hamlet.

*But come on, RSC, you know there’s going to be a market if you record it – it’s been done for lesser productions