BWW Reviews: HAMLET, The National Theatre, October 20 2010

Confession time - I have never really "got" Shakespeare as a dramatist, though the sonnets alone are enough for me to accept him as a genius. The comedies, though not very funny, are good fun, but the tragedies I find hard work, searching for a hook to locate the plays, if not within contemporary language, then within contemporary mores.

Nicholas Hytner's Hamlet at The National Theatre is set in a surveillance state - characters are trailed by security details whispering into concealed microphones and adjusting earpieces. Dressed in CIA chic, these supernumeraries are a useful device to establish the claustrophobic environment at Elsinore, but soon become distracting, traipsing off stage four steps behind the characters. Vicki Mortimer's set has something of the austere bleakness of a mid-European embassy in London, but has nothing to suggest Denmark, past or present. After the chilling opening scene, the lack of any clear signposting of external scenes adds to the pressure-cooker environment of Claudius' court, but doesn't help those without a BA in English to follow the plot.

As King Claudius, Patrick Malahide is a menacing, thin-lipped usurper, eagerly pulling on levers of state (including television) to establish his power with cynical efficiency. Especially in the er... king-size photographic portrait hanging in Claudius' study, Malahide looks uncannily like Vladimir Putin - which may be a happy accident, or an inspired piece of casting. Rory Kinnear's Hamlet veers between teenage angst, hiding under the duvet in his student bedsit of a room, and deep insights into the state of human nature - as if Shakespeare anticipated the views of John Lennon's biggest fans and biggest critics and incorporated them into one person. Ruth Negga as Ophelia is given the task of pushing a shopping trolley around the stage which, though suitably suggestive of madness, does not sit easily with the daughter of a Chief Minister. Casting is again interesting, since Kinnear looks older than his 32 years and Ms Negga much younger than her 28 which gives their doomed romance a touch of the tension present in Hamlet's desire to wrench his mother away from Claudius.

So how should we view this Hamlet as presented in London in 2010? Hytner's intention is to underline the political elements of the play, especially in the way that Ophelia is led to her death at the hands of his heavies rather than at her own hand for all her mad singing. And where does this leave Hamlet? He murders in error but shows little remorse and is equally ruthless in condemning erstwhile friends turned spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths. By the end of the play, he accepts his destiny as the agent of the Claudius' court's demise and his own with it. Possibly prompted by the video crews appearing intermittently throughout the play, I was reminded of martyr videos made by suicide bombers in justification of their acts, with Horatio charged with posting it all on youtube. That Hamlet is granted a soldier's burial by Fortinbras would have pleased the perpetrators of the attacks on London of July 7 2005.

Hamlet continues at The National Theatre until early January 2011.

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