Review: NT LIVE'S HAMLET, Starring Hiran Abeysekera, Cinemas

NT Live's filmed screening of Hamlet, featuring Hiran Abeysekera (Olivier award-winner for Life of Pi) in the title role, will be released in UK cinemas on January 22 and soon after around the world.

NT Live began broadcasting live performances from London's National Theatre to cinemas and art centres in 2009 with a production of Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren. An admirable initiative, NT Live offers broader access to its shows for those unable to afford a ticket or get to London's South Bank.  

One of the hardest nuts to crack in the Shakespeare canon has to be Hamlet. Abeysekera's fast-paced depiction of the troubled young prince in a modern setting ("Saltburn meets country manor house" is how he describes it) could well appeal to younger viewers in particular.

Students coming to this play for the first time are likely to appreciate sulky Hamlet's cutting-edge style, from a vintage Blockbuster Video-branded sweatshirt, to a great deal of finger-pistol pointing to his head and jokey asides.

We also get a more comic Polonius (Geoffrey Streatfeild) alongside a strangely unemotional Gertrude (Ayesha Dharker). Meanwhile, Hari MacKinnon's Rosencrantz and Joe Bolland's Guildenstern are suitably preppy, striped blazer figures who look like they could have been Boris Johnson's classmates at Eton.

Alastair Petrie as Claudius does his best to bring some sobriety to the party and Siobhan Redmond's Player Queen offers the ultimate lesson in how to clearly speak the lines.

But the out-and-out star of the show is Eleanor Mills as a go-getting and spirited Ophelia. Mills communicates directly with the audience and steals every scene when she's on stage. We are putty in her hands with every glance, gesture and word she throws our way.

Does this novel blink-or-you'll-miss-it version of one of the Bard's most famous plays actually work? That is the question.

For some, Robert Hastie's (Standing at the Sky's Edge, Operation Mincemeat) first offering in his new role as the National's deputy artistic director might appear bold, fun and up-to-the-minute. While others could find it too rowdy and shouty – to the degree that it's hard to appreciate the rhythm of Shakespeare's verse encapsulating Hamlet's emotive ruminations on themes of revenge, madness, life and death.

You certainly can't fault the production team's efforts that are captured splendidly on film. Ben Stones' opulent European palace set with forest and military murals on its walls (eat your heart out Bridgerton) is the ideal backdrop.

Jessica Hung Han Yun's lighting is evocative (I especially liked the use of torches in the unnerving ghost scene), and sound design by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite and music by Richard Taylor both contribute to the unsettling atmosphere of the play.

If the play's the thing, then the filmed screening of the play is the next best thing for those who couldn't be there in person or those who want to check out the rotten state of Denmark one more time.  

NT Live's Hamlet is in cinemas nationwide from 22 January