Hamlet at the National opens like a John Lewis Christmas advert. Elegant celebrations are in progress. The stage is full of dining tables draped in white linen and adorned with flowers and beautiful glassware sparkling in the candlelight. Elsinore is reimagined as the home of a multicultural royal family. Claudius, resplendent in a dark dinner jacket, toasts his Asian bride, Gertrude, who wears a banana-yellow sari.
Enter Hamlet, hunched and mutinous, in a snaky black suit like a moody star at a film première. He cheers up when he reaches his first soliloquy which he delivers to the crowd like a larky routine at a comedy club. Hiran Abeysekera (Hamlet) is a talented and hyperactive clown who gets big laughs from unpromising material. But he lacks the substance for the role. Despair and passion are outside his range so he settles for a sort of cocky petulance that suits the glib mood of the piece. This is a flat-share Hamlet without depth or intellectual curiosity. Some lines go missing because the actors seem to misunderstand them. Ryan Ellsworth rattles through the Ghost’s speech as if he’s keen to catch the 8.15 from Waterloo. And he sits on a chair. That looks weird. Why would a ghost need to take a breather?
Rather than fussing over small details, the production invites us to relish its chic and eclectic visual style. When Hamlet tires of his fashionable suit he puts on a Blockbuster Video sweatshirt from the 1990s. Bored with this costume, he adopts a designer T-shirt bearing the slogan, ‘Tobacco and boys’. For his death scene, he wriggles into a pink sports vest. He has no romantic interest in Ophelia because he’s clearly smitten with Rosencrantz whose bottom he likes to pat and squeeze. This leaves Francesca Mills (Ophelia) with very little to work with dramatically so she sends up her role in the early scenes. Skilful work. Later, after Polonius’s death, she expresses her grief by donning a pair of white fairy wings and horsing around with a gardener’s shovel and a casket containing her late father’s effects. Too many props.
Blame the director, Robert Hastie, who ignores the stage directions in Hamlet’s pivotal encounter with Gertrude. ‘The Queen’s closet,’ says the text. Hastie puts the characters in a bland lecture hall which destroys the atmosphere and erases the scene’s emotional context. The Mousetrap is played as a satire on amateur dramatics with inept lighting, cheap costumes and pretentious acting. A funny spoof but very mean-spirited. A director at the National should create a brilliant show, if he can, rather than mock the efforts of volunteers.
Geoffrey Streatfeild (Polonius) gets plenty of laughs but he’s perhaps too youthful to play the ‘good old man’. Red-headed Tom Glenister (Laertes) wears a striking bleached quiff, like Ellen DeGeneres. The depraved Claudius is played by Alistair Petrie, who carries himself with a marvellous air of unflappable decency. He looks like a retired solicitor who buys antique firearms as a hobby. But he lacks the thuggish menace of a medieval king presiding over a court full of spies and killers. He’s miles too nice. And Petrie is exceptionally lean and tall as well. In his fencing whites, he resembles a lighthouse. So why does he feel threatened by his irascible little nephew who barely reaches up to his elbow? It’s a shame that Abeysekera’s Hamlet is not a success but he gives it his best shot. As Tom Courtenay said: ‘You can only fail in the part.’ A note to the NT. Read the script. It contains useful ideas about staging this play.
The Importance of Being Earnest has moved from the National to the West End with Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell. Max Webster modernises some aspects of the original but the Victorian furnishings and décor remain. The show opens with a big dance number accompanied by swirling piano effects, as if the play were a cabaret gala rather than a quietly hilarious comedy.
Jack and Algy appear to be closeted lovers who decide to marry society ladies. Why? Perhaps to conceal their ongoing affair. Jack (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) arranges a private moment with Gwendolen (Kitty Hawthorne) in order to propose. And she screams her head off at him. He reacts with panic, leaping over a chaise longue and cowering in the corner like a scolded pit bull. Their romance doesn’t make sense.
Stephen Fry’s Lady Bracknell looks absurd in an ornate floor-length frock but he plays the role with sincerity and directness. That’s all the play needs. Not additions. Fry’s warm mellow voice works well as a conduit for Lady Bracknell’s prickly rhetoric and savage putdowns. Great casting.
If you love this play, you may find this version a let-down. Too brassy, too unsubtle, too clever. It’s a rash director who tries to outsmart Oscar Wilde.
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