Review: HAMLET, Chichester Festival Theatre
Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz
William Shakespheare wrote Hamlet around 1600, and it was the longest of his plays with over 4000 lines but is firmly established as one of the greatest English language drama tragedies. It was written just a few years after the death of his eleven-year-old son Hamnet giving it extra poignancy with its emotional themes of love, grief and revenge. It, of course, has given us many of the most famous phases which people know, sometimes without realising the source. Indeed, the line “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” signifying underlying corruption and moral imbalance within the country’s leadership might apply to many states around the world today!
Its tale is well known to most. Hamlet is disturbed and driven to revenge by seeing the ghost of his father, who reveals that he was murdered by Claudius, now King, who has swiftly married the widowed Queen Gertrude. Polonius bans his daughter Ophelia from speaking to Hamlet who is wooing her and sees his son Laertes depart for Paris. Hamlet starts to descend towards madness having seen the ghost and his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent to watch him and report back. It hardly requires a spoiler alert to confirm that by the end they are all dead! The part of Hamlet as originally written is huge, nearly 40% of all the lines and nearly three times the length of the next largest, Claudius. At Chichester Festival Theatre, the original script has been trimmed but is played mainly in full running to nearly three and a half hours, and though the time passes surprisingly quickly, there are occasionally speeches that you tune out of and assume are often cut in shorter versions! Of course, critical to our continued attention is that the lines are spoken well with rhythm and clarity and by and large, the cast to a very good job in their delivery.
The challenge of such a long familiar play, especially in a small intimate venue like the Minerva, is that you can be more absorbed by the directorial decisions, blocking and technical execution of the actions rather than being engaged in the narrative storytelling. The actors are so close you can almost feel the quality of the costumes (Gertrude’s cloak in the opening scene is magnificent), you puzzle of an actor’s gold painted shoes or Ophelia’s blood-stained underskirt. You marvel at the full-blooded sword fight and slightly fear for a wayward weapon on the front row. You speculate that those in the cheap seats can’t see much of the actions staged in raised upstage box set due to the sight lines. You wonder at the decision to have Osric’s rush across the raised upstage platform to announce the arrival of Fortinbras as they all die in the foreground. You amuse as the Gravediggers shovel gravel out of Yorick’s grave which has cleverly appeared in the slope between the raised castle room and the courtyard on the thrust stage. You are frequently directly engaged by Polonius and others as they break the fourth wall and deliver their lines to individuals in the audience. It is all very well done but we are connecting with the actors and not the characters that they play.
Nevertheless, while admiring the techniques used to stage the play, we are generally swept along by delivery of the lines with some very strong and compelling performances, and can easily see why the 425-year-old play continues to entertain without updates or reinventions of the period. Giles Terera is quietly compelling as Hamlet, although he occasionally rushes some lines. We can see his horror at being visited by his father’s ghost, we can hear his descent towards madness and frenzied horror and we can take delight in his return to sanity to wreak revenge on the villainous King. Eve Ponsoby as Ophelia takes a similar despairing journey from youthful innocent to mad eyed suicidal lunatic. Gertrude (Sara Powell) remains regally aloof until she realises her mistake in marrying Claudius (Airyon Bakare) who conveys the authority and dignity of a King while scheming against Hamlet. Beatie Edney has great fun as Gravedigger 1 adding a little light relief. Yet best of all is Keir Charles’ magnificent Polonius (sadly killed off too early in Act 3 of 5) who conspiratorially engages us all in his asides and observations and gives us a real sense of how it might have felt watching this play as a groundling in the Globe all those years ago.
Having seen Sir Ian McKellen’s shortened, slightly odd, version of the play in Windsor in 2021, a Sh*t faced Shakespeare and open air Actors Church, Covent Garden versions in 2019, Giles Brandreth’s 90-minute version at the Park in 2017 and Benedict Cumberbatch’s 2015 NT film capture, it was a pleasure to see Hamlet as Shakespeare might have intended, played in a grand theatrical style. Yes, we might have liked it trimmed by 30-45 minutes, true too that we prefer to be more emotionally engaged with the narrative, but rarely do we sit through this length of play, remain absorbed by what is being presented, admire the technique on show and appreciate the quality of the writing and clarity of the meaning so well.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
Hamlet plays at Chichester Festival Theatre until 4 October, with further info here.