Screening Review: HAMLET, National Theatre Live
Photo credit: Sam Taylor
In October 2025, Chichester Festival Theatre staged its first production of Hamlet in its Minerva Theatre and the National Theatre staged their seventh version as part of new artistic director Indhu Rubasingham’s first season in its Lyttelton Theatre. While the Chichester production, starring Giles Terera as Hamlet, played it as Shakespeare might have intended, focusing on the horror and tragedy of the story, the NT chose to reinvent the four hundred- and twenty-five-year-old play for a modern youthful audience, reflected in its staging, costumes, and casting. It’s a risk as it invites comparison with some of the most successful productions that have gone before and the changes can become irritating distractions rather than innovative new insights.
The play was drawn to our attention with the release of the new film Hamnet with Jessie Buckley, the week before the NT Live film capture of their production was released for cinema and NT Home viewing. Many believe, as the film suggests, that Shakespeare greatest tragedy written around 1600 was inspired by his grief for the loss of his young son Hamnet in 1596. Though he reversed the relationship, the play deals with the grief and desire for revenge for the loss of a member of the family. Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, murdered by Claudius who then marries his mother and is driven towards madness by his desire for revenge. At the same time, Laertes seeks revenge for the death of his father, Polonius, and his sister Ophelia. It does not end well for any of them.
The National Theatre seeks to make a statement in its multi-ethnic casting and design of the play to reflect the new director’s desire to bring diversity to the stage and champion unheard voices at the NT. She casts an Asian Hamlet, Hiran Abeysekera, an actor born with achondroplasia as Ophelia, Francesca Mills, and switches the gender of both Horatio, played by Tessa Wong, and Osric (Mary Higgins) in order to adjust the gender balance. When Hamlet appears for the play Murder of Gonzago towards the end of Act 1, he wears a t-shirt emblazoned with “Tobacco and Boys”, which appears to refer to a Marlowe quote about atheism and homosexuality, and a Stephen Fry play, which explores similar themes. At the grave side, they use a white plastic chair. The cast are in modern dress. None of these changes add to the meaning or engagement with the play except to create a look and feel different to what has gone before.
The capture too fails to enhance our viewing experience. Whereas David Tennant’s brilliant performance in Macbeth at the Donmar was beautifully adapted in the lighting and blocking for the screen, the capture of this Hamlet does not translate quite so successfully to the big screen. The opening scene with a darkened stage and faces lit by torches may have created a ghostly atmosphere in the theatre, but on screen is simply too dark to engage with. Throughout the production, characters break the fourth wall, even stepping through it into the auditorium during soliloquies which, in theatre, can draw us in but on screen, unless they look directly down the camera (as Tennant does), it simply looks a little odd and ineffective.
The result means the cast have to be very good to connect with the viewers. Claudius (Alistair Petrie), Polonius (Geoffrey Streatfeild) and First Player (Siobhán Redmond) demonstrate then that when you speak the lines with careful pacing and rhythm and an understanding of the meaning, you bring a clarity and understanding to the audience.
Abeysekera makes us aware that he knows that this is a play, frequently engaging the audience directly with his eyes and looks and even reacts comically bemused when he sees other actors delivering lines directly to the audience. It adds some laughs to the play but little to our understanding of the character. When he delivers the famous “To be or not to be” speech sat on the forestage, he wears a Blockbuster Video sweatshirt and leaves us asking “why?”. Francesca Mills is much more successful as the tragic Ophelia, with a good contrast between the enthusiastic celebratory joy of the opening scenes to the tormented madness of her later scenes.
The viewing of the film Hamnet and the NT capture of Hamlet in the same month is an interesting opportunity but we would rather have seen a capture of the Chichester version than the NT one. Besties, you don’t need reminding that “The play is the thing” and you meddle with Shakespeare works at your peril. He may have written this one “out of weakness and melancholy” and states that you “abuse me to damn me” but we feel that there is no need to reinvent his works for a modern audience, and it is better to be “to thy own self true”. The lines speak for themselves and when spoken properly, they do not need gimmicks and updates to make them connect with modern audiences. We recommend you watch to make up your own mind.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
NT Live’s Hamlet plays in UK cinemas from 22 January, with further info here.