HAMLET at the Harold Pinter Theatre
Produced by the Almeida Theatre, dir. Robert Icke.
This production was hugely disappointing to me. I am no particular Andrew Scott fan or Shakespeare scholar (other reviews have mentioned the cutting and rearranging of the text) but I know enough. I’ve seen Hamlet on stage before; the London transfer of the RSC’s 2008 production. David Tennant was off on the night I saw the show, ably understudied by Edward Bennett, but the formidable cast also featured Patrick Stewart, Oliver Ford Davies and Mariah Gale. Perhaps any production would not live up to the standards set by that one, but I hoped the Almeida might try.
Angus Wright as Claudius is shockingly underpowered. He doesn’t seem to act but recite his lines in his own rich voice. This aside, it was not kingly. He did not look regal, the usurper. He looked like he was emceeing a trade conference. Sitting as I was in the balcony, there were times when I could see no more than a collection of bald heads milling around on stage. But the director’s occasional use of live camera work beamed to screens at my eye level meant I did see some of the performance rather up close, and my criticism remains. Juliet Stevenson was perhaps the standout in this unhappy mix of thesps. I was very excited to see Jessica Brown Findlay, having failed to catch her in the Almeida’s Chekhov season last year but having enjoyed her turn in Black Mirror. Clearly she can act. Here she was woefully underused. Ophelia’a descent in to madness was conveyed simply by putting her in a wheelchair. Key lines were not spoken – excluded rather than forgotten, I would say. The cast did not seem to be miced, meaning that up in the balcony, even in the deathly silence of a rapt audience, we struggled to hear large portions of the play. Andrew Scott becoming alternatively hysterical and fiercely angry also led to a deterioration in what we could actually understand of his performance. He keeps his own Irish accent which only serves to mark him out from the rest of the cast with their RSC and RP voices. It is an absurd amalgamation.
We sat through almost two hours of this before, during the performance of “The Mousetrap”, a stage manager appeared calling for a break due to technical difficulties. This man was an actor, and this ruse in fact led to the first interval. To maintain this illusion of a “show stop” the director opted to keep the house lights down through the entire 15-20 minutes. Particularly upstairs in the balcony, I feel this was dangerous and artistic licence too far. I shall be speaking to Westminster Council to confirm the theatre has permission for this semi-blackout, but speaking personally I didn’t feel safe, especially with people’s bags and coats packed along the floor of the narrow aisles.
Not thirty minutes later we were out for another “pause”, only to return for another hour of boredom. The fencing scenes were pathetically done. Loud music blared out over a key scene here, removing the need for the actors to do anything behind mouth their dialogue. It was overall a terrible production. If you thought the RSC’s avant-garde stuff in the 70s was bad, stay well away from the Harold Pinter until September.
1/5 for Juliet Stevenson. Maybe it will get some people in to theatre who otherwise wouldn’t go.