TheatreguideLondon
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The TheatreguideLondon Review
Hamlet
Young Vic Theatre Winter 2011-2012
Hamlet is a pretty good play. It really doesn't need the help of directors or designers to improve it.
I have no quarrel with – indeed, great admiration for – directors who use their talents and insights to illuminate and enrich the text. I have less patience with 'concepts' imposed on the text that add little, subtract a lot and generally seem to exist just to show how clever the directors and/or designers believe they are.
The best things about the Young Vic's new Hamlet are the play itself and the nicely nuanced performance of Michael Sheen as the Prince. The worst things are the concept pasted onto the play by director Ian Rickson and designer Jeremy Herbert, and some of the things that overlay leads them to do to what Shakespeare wrote.
Inspired perhaps by the Marat/Sade, Rickson and Herbert have set the play in an insane asylum.
The audience is led around to the back of the building and then through winding backstage spaces disguised as hospital corridors before entering the theatre. The first court scene is played as group therapy, with Claudius as doctor and everyone else as patients, though Polonius will later switch between patient and staff, and Gertrude's role in this construct will never be clear.
Security doors open and close with the flashing of alarms, visitors are frisked on their way in, and Hamlet listens in on Claudius' Prayer Scene through an office intercom. Later he is sent off to England sedated and strapped to a wheelchair (though he wakes up long enough to watch Fortinbras' army on television and speak his soliloquy before passing out again).
The best that can be said for this is that perhaps Ian Rickson had The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in mind, and wanted to suggest that the entire play was the warped perceptions of Patient H, but the simplest response to that is to say that this play is not Caligari and the concept just doesn't work.
Meanwhile, other directorial decisions range from the harmless – Rosencrantz is played by an actress, though everyone calls her 'sir' and 'him' – to the more problematical – Horatio is also an actress, but she comes across less as a fellow student than as an old girlfriend, muddying the emotional waters – to open violations of the text – Claudius tells the English king to kill Hamlet by telephone, making nonsense of the letter switch later - and the downright weird – as always, there's a lot of doubling of roles, but Rickman has Polonius and Ophelia literally climb out of their graves to become the Priest and Osric respectively. And the very last seconds of the play bring in a surprise effect that says absolutely nothing except 'Oh how clever we are.'
And yes, some of the director's inventions actually work – the Ghost inhabits Hamlet's body and speaks through him, Polonius makes Ophelia read Hamlet's love letter in front of the King and Queen, to her deep embarrassment, and later she speaks 'Oh what a noble mind' directly to Hamlet rather than after he's left.
Michael Sheen's Prince may play a bit too old for the role – he actually looks older than Claudius or Gertrude – and he may saw the air too much with his hands. But he captures the reality of the character, speaking every speech as if for the first time, repeatedly caught short by his own emotions and even startled by the words he hears himself saying.
'Too solid flesh' is a wail of pain, while 'To be' is quiet and controlled, the born student thinking his way through a metaphysical problem, and 'Oh what a rogue' is a convincing dramatic journey from one thought and emotion to another. Whether he's supposed to be Hamlet or Patient H, we always believe in the man and in his pain, and care about him.
If James Clyde ever denies that his Claudius is modelled on David Frost, don't believe him. He has all the mannerisms, all the oily smoothness and all the veneer of fake sincerity with nothing beneath – and it works, at least until Shakespeare inconveniently gives Claudius a couple of sincere moments, which we can't believe.
Sally Dexter doesn't seem to have found Gertrude at all, and is too often little more than an extra hovering around the edges of scenes; she doesn't show the Queen much affected by the Closet Scene. Michael Gould's Polonius is just the stock comic figure (I prefer a Polonius who offers some threat to Hamlet), but Gould is the first to ever convince me that the man really loves his children.
Vinette Robinson is as invisible as most Ophelias are until the mad scenes, and there disappoints for an unexpected reason – she seems to have studied and copied the symptoms of dementia closely, but the effect is more like a cold case study than a moment inspiring horror or pity.
For my fellow pedants, the three and a half hour running time includes a lot of small updatings of obscure language and more textual trims than wholesale cuts, the most noticeable absences being the departure and return of the ambassadors to Norway, the advice to the players, and the spoken parts of the Mousetrap; and in keeping with modern practice, 'To be' and the Nunnery Scene are moved up to the First Quarto position.
Keep your eyes on Michael Sheen and ignore everything – absolutely everything – going on around him, and the play will work despite (not because of) the concept imposed on it.
Gerald Berkowitz
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Review - Hamlet - Young Vic 2011
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