Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The Dane gets an interpretive dance makeover: Ian McKellan’s Hamlet reviewed

Plus Edinburgh Fringe boasts two excellent Borises

Johan Christensen and Ian McKellen in Hamlet. Photo: Devin de Vil

Ian McKellen’s Hamlet is the highlight of Edinburgh’s opening week. In this experimental ballet, Sir Ian speaks roughly 5 per cent of the lines, accompanied by a hunky blond dancer, Johan Christensen, who offers a physical interpretation of the Dane’s melancholy. The other roles are played by a ballet troupe in olde worlde costumes. The performing area is a black thrust stage, gleaming like patent leather, surrounded by low spotlights and swirling dry ice. It looks like Elsinore recreated by a cruise-ship designer.

Newcomers will find the story mystifying. Hamlet smoulders longingly at Horatio and they dance like a hot couple at a gay night spot. The middle-aged Laertes seems to be the boss or perhaps the father of Ophelia who appears to be sharing a flat with a youthful Polonius. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do a decent comedy turn as bickering siblings. One element, the death of Gonzago, is greatly improved by the dancing but much of the narrative has been dropped altogether which is frustrating for the play’s fans.

There are not one but two excellent Borises up here

McKellen wears a microphone in this smallish theatre and he performs with little passion because his speeches are detached from the ballet, like museum exhibits. He spends most of his time ogling the muscular Christensen as he cavorts across every inch of the slippery-looking stage without falling once. Excellent work. During his pas de deux with Ophelia he hoiks her across his beefy shoulders and twirls her around the venue while she scissors her legs open and shut. That, perhaps, is a less satisfying portrait of doomed infatuation than Hamlet’s letter ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire…’

This is an interesting experiment, and an easy gig for McKellen, but it’s aimed at gay men, ballet fans, and people who quite like Hamlet but can’t be bothered to sit through it twice.

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