A brave plunge into the deep end struggles as a Hamlet for our times
Hamlet
In terms of popular hysteria, there’s no contest: this Hamlet starring Andrew Scott is small fry compared with his Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch’s Great Dane of 2015 – which sold out its allocation at the Barbican in just seven hours, a year before opening.
Even so, the chance to get up close and personal with Scott – last seen on telly in January doing his terrifying maniacal thing as Moriarty in “The Final Problem” – has made this production, directed by man-of-themoment Robert Icke, a hot ticket; the first day saw a returns queue form at 5am. And where Cumberbatch could point to prior Shakespearean credits, the risk factor here is more excitingly pronounced. Aside from appearing as Louis XI in the BBC’s The Hollow Crown (almost a spear-carrier role against Cumberbatch’s Richard of York), this is a brave plunge in at the deep end of Shakespearean tragedy.
How does the Irishman, at 40, fare in this Bardic stage debut? Well enough. We expected intelligence – we get that. Clad simply in black, at times barefoot, this Hamlet’s forte is a quivering, quavering emotionality. At the start, he’s so full of grief for his father he can hardly get the words out, rubs his eyes as if pressing back the tears, has a coltish vulnerability combined with the right measure of world-weary disgust. “To be or not to be” comes relatively early, with expressive melancholy, and works a treat.
What Scott lacks, though, except in rare moments of flare-up rage and petulance, is full-throttle passion. He’s lyrical but low-key, and at times gropes for the words, hands sawing the air, with the studied tentativeness of someone unwrapping a gift, the contents of which they already know.
This wouldn’t matter hugely, except that Icke’s modern-dress production is disappointingly subdued. Aside from a seductive sense of ongoing nuptial celebrations, spilling from a chic interior out through a double-set of wall-length windows, this is more Elsi-snore than Elsinore.
Angus Wright lends wall-flower restraint to budding tyrant Claudius, Juliet Stevenson’s regal Gertrude has the air of a queen stuck at the wrong function. Some of the pauses last as long as the Elizabethan age and some of the verse-speaking is as flat as freshly steam-rollered tarmac. There are flickers of stylish experimentalism – CCTV feeds featuring grainy shots of the ghost, blasts of Bob Dylan and a few interpolated moments of full-on tactility, with (ex- Downton star) Jessica Brown Findlay’s Ophelia even glimpsed in the flesh in a bath.
But was I fully persuaded after three hours that I’d sat through a Hamlet for our times? Alack and fie for shame, no.