Goodnight, Sweet Prince

The story which began in September 2007, when I received my RSC mailshot with the news that David Tennant would be playing Hamlet at Stratford, is over*.

It turns out that we were to be at what passed for David’s press night. Having reviewed understudy Ed Bennett’s performance on the official press night, it seems that a number of the nationals went back on Wednesday to see what they had missed. The reviews had been in many cases more favourable than I felt the production deserved back in Stratford. This time, they had gone to see the Prince – and what a performance he gave them.

For me, this was the best performance by the whole ensemble. Perhaps their performances had strengthened in David’s absence, but it once again showed the value of the revitalised ensemble ethos in the RSC. My favourite ‘David’ performance will remain November in Stratford, but mainly because we were much closer on that occasion. Other cast members were the best I’d seen them, with Penny Downie and Oliver Ford Davies standing out. I also loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who seemed bewildered by the machinations of the court and caught up in things they didn’t understand, which made their lack of an ending even sadder**. I thought Patrick Stewart was the best I’d seen him, but that he still lacked authority, and, from where we were sitting, he was almost inaudible at the start.

Originally directed for the thrust stage of the Courtyard Theatre, and now adapted to a proscenium arch theatre, and there were times when the staging was slightly at odds with the space it occupied. There was, however, more of a sense of spectacle about the big set pieces, the play within the play, the duel, and for the first time we could see the reflections in the mirrored doors at the back of the stage.

As for David as Hamlet, well, once again, he broke my heart. I do not understand how it is possible for someone to perform those speeches as though they are being said for the first time, but he did. He had always been brilliant at the start of the play, but now the performance was sustained. You would not have thought he’d recently had an operation, except that the duel was slightly less energetic than before.

This time, it was ‘Oh what a rogue and peasant slave’, and ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ which made me hold my breath, and, incredibly, his reading of ‘the readiness is all’. He’d found a way to do it, giving it a sense of acceptance and finality, which didn’t make me long for ‘let be’.

As a production, it still has its flaws. It remains clumsily cut; the curtailing of R&G’s story, and the loss of Fortinbras, being the worst excesses of this (seriously, if you don’t know, just who is this guy who comes in at the very end?), and it isn’t particularly innovative in its approach.

But on that night in London, I truly felt that the promise that was there in July was delivered. It will live in my memory for years to come, as many earlier productions still do, and every audience member will have their own, different, memories, and perhaps that is what theatre is all about. There is no ‘correct’ way of doing Hamlet, just, (to steal from Cleopatra), infinite varieties. And that’s as it should be.

For now, the rest is silence.

*At least, the Hamlet chapter is, unless we are lucky enough for them to make the DVD. The David story will continue.

**Yup, still bitter about the pirates!