Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Directed by Justin Audibert
Minerva Theatre, Chichester
Star rating: 4
Chichester’s first ever production of what is, arguably, Shakespeare’s finest tragedy tells the story with commendable clarity. I have rarely heard the text spoken so accessibly and I’ve seen dozens of Hamlets, including some very famous ones, over the years.
It is the longest play in the cannon and the Hamlet speaks more lines than any other Shakespeare character so – even with plenty of judicious cuts, this production still lasts 3 hours and 30 minutes. Never at any point in all that time, though, is it anything less than focused and most of the time it’s needle-sharp. The period it’s set in is a bit vague, however – perhaps Edwardian
Giles Terera doesn’t give us a particularly youthful Hamlet or stress his adolescent hang-ups. Rather he presents a thoughtful adult grieving for his father and desperate to do what seems right, given that his mother has just married her brother-in-law who murdered her husband and is now king. He captures many moods and carries audience sympathy.
Ariyon Bakare is a fine Claudius – an imperious controller in public and a ruthless manipulator in private. Politically, he’s totally plausible. I really liked the dignity, elegance and stillness which Sara Powell brings to Gertrude too because it is then very effective when she loses control in the closet scene – which Terera makes as uncomfortable as it can possibly be. A son telling his mother how her sex life should be managed, in colourful detail is always disturbing and Terera really brings that out.
Keir Charles’s Polonius is just an anxious father trying to keep in with the new king and a little less tiresome here than in some interpretations. And Eve Ponsonby as Ophelia ensures that the mad scene is excruciatingly painful. It is a stroke of genius to have her in a dirty white cotton dress with a blood stain on the front of the skirt and a huge one at the back. It feels almost obscene and emphasises her total loss of self awareness. In the end a horrified Gertrude wraps a cover round her waist and helps her off stage at the end of the scene.
Lily Arnold’s design is interesting. There’s a mezzanine playing area with side steps which works perfectly for the battlements and enables Gertrude to have a cosy private sitting room for the closet scene. At one point Terera soliloquises sitting casually on the edge of it. On the main stage below it is an all purpose rocky mound behind a large tiled open space. Characters leap on and off it and it opens to create an effective grave for Ophelia with Beatie Edney as an engaging grave digger.
The lighting (Ryan Day) is both imaginative and evocative – there are rows of glowing lights and a huge centre quasi-chandelier. It enables some very dark scenes and some very bright ones. And the production makes strong use of blackout – especially at the end of the first half when Hamlet creeps up on the praying Claudius, dagger raised. So it becomes a cliff hanger.
This production is a richly worthwhile take on a magnificent play which succeeds because it is of its time – and of our time. Spying, betrayal and lack of trust are as topical today as they have ever been.
Of course at the midweek matinee I saw there were large numbers of retired people but there was also a school party – GCSE students, I should think – and it’s encouraging to see Hamlet making an impact on people of different backgrounds and levels of experience.
