A triumph: Young Vic's Hamlet reviewed

Here goes. The Young Vic’s Hamlet, directed by Greg Hersov, is a triumph. This is a pared-back, plain-speaking version done with captivating simplicity and perfect trust in the text. The star is Shakespeare and the production merely opens up an aperture to his dazzling account of human greatness and frailty. The action takes place on a small, level stage that could be covered by two bedspreads. Designer Anna Fleischle adds an oblong arch of distressed stone along with three tall blocks that rotate to create internal hiding places, corridors and cubby-holes. That’s all she needs to suggest a house of horrors, a court of nightmares, a royal palace beset by plots and whispers of secret killings. Every designer should see this Elsinore and learn how to generate a medieval kingdom from a handful of painted uprights. The audience’s imagination is the best material a designer has.

Cush Jumbo’s Hamlet is a shaven-headed, sexless rebel — a student anarchist on the loose. She slouches on stage in Act One (deliberately late for an official meeting) and surveys the court with a gaze full of mischief, anger and malevolence. This is a prince who knows all about depression and suicidal feelings, and who chooses to feign madness as an act of self-protection. But the pretence forces him/her to the point where actual lunacy becomes a danger. At moments of maximum stress, Jumbo twitches her hands and scratches at her temples as if trying to shoo an evil spirit from her skull. But these gestures emerge quite naturally from her performance, without any sense of deliberation or express purpose. It’s as if she hasn’t been directed at all in the role. She just is.