Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Return to gender

Replacing the prince with a princess costs the play much of its logic, dramatic force and suspense

Regime change at the Globe. The new boss, Michelle Terry, wants a 50/50 ratio of males to females in each production. Rather eccentric. Why cast a drama to reflect the distribution of sexual organs across the general populace? Imagine hiring an orchestra to represent the ratio of citizens who can play an instrument. And didn’t the process of examining actor’s genitals at auditions land Harvey Weinstein in a spot of bother? Ms Terry’s gender fixation is called, curiously enough, ‘gender-blind casting’. She inaugurates her reign at the Globe by offering us a production of Hamlet in which, perhaps with a nod to gender-blind casting, she plays the lead.

No one but Ms Terry would have hired Ms Terry for this role. She’s a decent second-tier actress without any special vocal or physical endowments. Her distinctive features are a toothsome grin and a habit of squinching up her eyes and blinking like an anxious governess unexpectedly robbed of her sunshades while surveying the pyramids. Replacing the prince with a princess costs the play much of its logic, dramatic force and suspense. It’s no longer a murderous tussle between two medieval schemers, armed to the teeth and trained to kill, who might at any moment fall to blows or to deadly swordplay. It’s something else, something decorative and strange, a confection of visual experiments with a few good touches.

Richard Katz is brilliant as Polonius. James Garnon’s Claudius is an irascible fop, which is highly amusing but he lacks any sense of menace or thuggery. The play scene is badly botched. Perhaps something went wrong on press night, when half the action was omitted. Hopefully this can be fixed. If left unaltered, it will mystify newcomers to Hamlet. Ms Terry seems ill at ease as the star.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in