Hiddle-Hamlet
A manly, edgy and tender prince
Yet another Hamlet is born. London has seen a spate of them in recent years; there are three different productions playing in the capital this weekend alone. But none has been as anticipated as this one since Benedict Cumberbatch played the Dane in 2015.
The reason for the fuss? The presence of British heart-throb du jour Tom Hiddleston in the lead and the fact that this production has a unique, exclusive intimacy. Running in Rada’s tiny, 160-seat Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre, and directed by that Shakespearean master Kenneth Branagh, it has been put on to raise money for the drama school, and tickets were allocated through a tout-proof online ballot. Unfortunately, for the many not lucky enough to get in, there is as yet no plan to record it for posterity.
It’s a shame, as this Hamlet hooks you in at once. In a space with only three rows of seats (flanking the stage on three sides), the audience are only ever a couple of metres away from the action, which lends this moderndress production a special kind of claustrophobia.
It opens with Hiddleston’s sharp profile, silhouetted in front of a small piano. He sings “And will he not come again?” in a quivering voice – the words that Ophelia uses to mourn her father Polonius – barely holding off tears, before leaving the stage in almost complete darkness.
After that poignant opening, Branagh has a lot more tricks up his sleeve: Claudius’s “inauguration” speech is played as if filmed for the press, in a space that recalls the White House. Strikingly, in the second act this presidential setting falls away, to be replaced by a minimalist, cinematic backdrop of a cloudy sky.
Gender-swapping Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Ayesha Antoine and Eleanor de Rohan) is nothing new, but Branagh also re-imagines Horatio as Horatia, who is passionately incarnated by Caroline Martin. It adds a surprising new dimension to one of the character’s last conversations with Hamlet before his exile. They embrace, stare into each other eyes intensely, and for one charged moment look to be on the precipice of a kiss.
There are a number of surprising comic touches; Laertes (Ifran Shamji) gives sister Ophelia (Kathryn Wilder) a package of condoms while instructing her to be careful around Hamlet. Later, Polonius (the wonderfully vibrant, scene-stealing Sean Foley) gives a similar but much bigger pack to Laertes while lecturing him.
It’s that sense of humour that singles out this Hamlet from other recent productions; never have I laughed so much at an account of the Prince of Denmark’s suffering. A wry edge is present in the smallest details; Hamlet, while discussing “words, words, words,” with Polonius, is reading Matt Haig’s Reasons to
Stay Alive.
And as for the main event, Hiddleston? His Hamlet is proactive, masculine, edgy to the point of aggression – and definitely, absolutely sane. His madness is a ruse, through and through. Having decided to “be mad by craft”, he appears wrapped in the flag of Denmark with his face painted in the national colours, like a hardcore football fan.
His take on the character is more in line with Cumberbatch’s expressive Hamlet than, say, Andrew Scott’s understated one in Robert Icke’s acclaimed production (whose West End transfer has just ended).
However, arguably, Hiddleston never quite gets under the skin of the character. His soliloquies, with their sometimes unvarying intonation, can feel too much like beautifully acted words rather than thoughts and feelings experienced by the character, here and now.
What he lacks in instinctiveness, though, he makes up for in selfassurance. Meanwhile, he is at his most affecting in the “Get thee to a nunnery” scene when his anger is undercut by a tenderness that is heartbreaking.
Moments like this suggest that this is a performance that could grow deeper and deeper; it’s just a shame that it only has three weeks to do so – but you wouldn’t bet against Hiddleston returning to the role in a more public forum.