Hamlet review

Frozen into helpless inaction while corruption festers in his country’s highest office, Shakespeare’s Hamlet may feel like an especially relatable protagonist for contemporary audiences.

This production marks the first time the eloquent tragedy has been staged in Shakespeare’s Globe’s indoor space, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and director Sean Holmes makes decent use of the intimate, candlelit venue. With lighting sometimes reduced to a single flickering flame, ghosts emerge spectrally from deep shadows as courtiers stumble down barely lit cloisters. Voices whisper and wail from the corridors outside the auditorium, occasionally adding to the immersion – though as often as not their insistent clamour becomes a distraction.

Holmes has opted for a heightened, self-referential tone here, lampshading the play’s most recognisable lines and partially deconstructing familiar passages with modern references. Snatches of familiar songs creep in. A gravedigger chats with the audience about the importance of a good comic interlude. Pleasingly irreverent as it may be, the production is often so focused on undercutting the text for effect that it strips the play of much of its emotional resonance.

Heading the cast, George Fouracres’ embittered Hamlet mopes around Elsinore in a tatty black greatcoat, constantly singing lines from Bigmouth Strikes Again by the Smiths. Though his delivery swerves erratically between whingeing and ferocious roaring, there are moments of real, affecting vulnerability to his performance too. When the horror and helplessness of his situation penetrates his affected disaffection, he suddenly wells up, crumples into himself in grief, and tries to hug the nearest bystander.

Rachel Hannah Clarke’s Ophelia is a strong presence, sticking up for herself as she’s disrespected and condescended to by the various overbearing men around her, less maddened by grief than angrily pushing back against their casual tyranny.

Meanwhile, Irfan Shamji’s scheming Claudius is convincingly unbalanced by guilt and self-regard, proudly magnanimous when he feels he’s in control, but prone to outbursts of anger, panic and sly viciousness when he’s threatened.

Grace Smart’s eclectic design reflects the plot’s jumble of competing perspectives with a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of aesthetics. Crisp, creamy white doublets trimmed with gold are worn alongside gladiatorial-looking leathers, while baggy jogging clothes mingle with rigid plate armour.

Smart’s set places the action in a frigid winter palace. Sparce candlelight reflects off shiny, smooth marble walls that are gradually defaced with layers of graffiti as the show goes on, before being disassembled completely in the closing scenes to reveal a construction site of plywood, wires and halogen strip lights behind the courtly façade. A circular reflecting pool occupies the centre of the stage, serene at first, but soon cluttered with flotsam – soggy clothes, drowned teddy bears, discarded love letters – that are palpable reminders of the characters’ unravelling lives.