Eddie Izzard’s one-man Hamlet deserves top marks

Every Hamlet is a failure. It always feels that way because playgoers tend to compare what they’re seeing with a superior version that exists only in their heads. And since disappointment is inevitable, it’s worth celebrating the successful novelties in Eddie Izzard’s solo version. He makes some valuable breakthroughs, especially in the comedic sections.

His Gravedigger is funny. Actually funny. That’s pretty rare. He plays Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as sock-puppets whose robotic yapping he imitates with his hands. Brilliant stuff. Well worth copying. His Osric is a greasy, cocktail-party flatterer with a faint Mexican accent. Osric, the Hispanic immigrant. That works too.

The show deserves top marks as a feat of acrobatics. All alone on the stage, Izzard manages to make sense of the complex and multi-layered ‘Mouse-Trap’ scene, (although it’s worth noting that this production is for connoisseurs only and will leave newcomers baffled). The swordfight in Act V becomes rather laborious because Izzard has to impersonate Claudius and Gertrude as well as the sweating, panting duellists. It seems very frantic rather than impressive but, to be fair, this climactic fight always drags on longer than necessary. And the staging is unhelpful to him throughout. The playing area is a vast pink oblong, like a sauna made of porcelain, devoid of ornaments or furnishings. It could be a dictator’s sarcophagus.

Izzard is more comfortable playing characters who are nearer his age. His Polonius is a hapless old duffer who hasn’t a clue that everyone finds him a bore. Claudius, his best role, is a stressed-out chief executive chasing around the stage, trying to quell a boardroom mutiny. The female characters are less successful. To imitate Gertrude and Ophelia he uses facile, girly gestures that indicate meekness and diffidence. As for the Dane, he plays him very correctly, very properly, like a precocious 12-year-old summoned to the headmaster’s office to impress the school governors.