Time Out on Hamlet, January 18 2002
Hamlet
Westminster Theatre, West End
British Touring Shakespeare
Fresh from a Middle Eastern command performance before the King of Dubai and his two wives, British Touring Shakespeare's Hamlet is sharpest when scrutinishing the pivotal relationship between play and audience. Manifested in an eerie rendering of 'The Mousetrap', this is developed through frequent auditorium action and Hamlet's informal use of the audienc as conspiratorial sounding blocks.
Miles Gregory's direction is invigoratingly clear and the plot rattles along with peculiar urgency. But the decision to shift the focus from Hamlet to a wider swoop of the court, affording us an overview of a small family coping with the effects of one member's madness, ultimately proves sticky. Has Hamlet dreamed up his uncle's fratricide? To concur is to dispense with the knife-edge of appearance and reality in which 'one may smile, and smile, and be a villain", erasing the delicious villainy behind Tom Cocklin's palm-rubbing Claudius and implausibly positing him as a man 'more sinned against than sinning". It also leaves Tom Mallaburn's sprightly, spoilt, and devastatingly lucid prince on a hiding to nothing. And what's poor Ophelia, played here by Keely Tauman as part raucous clown, part saccharine doll, to make of matters?
For all this the production crackles with energy derived from straightforward verse speaking, performances brought together with wit and integrity and Barbara Capocci's alluring design of projected forests, heraldic backdrops and insistent use of white to counterpoint the lugubrious undertow. A company to keep your eye on.
Sarah Adams
