Hamlet review

Ghostly and grief stricken, Freddie Fox’s Hamlet is something of a marvel. Dressed all in black, we see him sullenly creeping up the church aisle for his father’s funeral. At first still and stately, his soliloquies grab us with their careful, tired reflectiveness. 

But it is once fully immersed in his cloak of feigned madness that Fox breathes fresh life into the Danish prince. Erratically elf like, he scurries, jumps and sings as he plans to avenge his father’s "unnatural murder". As sarcastic as he is conniving, he observes his guilty uncle with childlike excitement as he is forced to watch his sins re-enacted by the players. Although undeniably actorish, it is a performance that deserves commend.

Yet, it is only Fox’s dynamism that carries this otherwise tangled Hamlet. Tom Littler’s production is, for the most part, directionless. It is neither traditional or modern – phones are brought out sporadically as props to busy the actors – but that’s about as close as we get to understanding this supposedly timeless setting. Littler’s interpretation is a strangely non-violent one – the death of Stefan Bednarczyk’s particularly pious Polonius is offstage and silent, losing all momentum and making it more of an unremarkable non-event than something truly disastrous.

Compared to the full-bodied performance of Fox, all the other actors remain in the shadows. Rosalind Ford is an educated, independent Ophelia, but her fall into insanity is one-note and wispy. Noel White shows flashes of slipperiness as the calculating politician Claudius, but too often does his performance veer to become nonthreatening. Karen Ascoe only just began to find her feet as the lost but affectionate Gertrude when she mistakenly drinks from the glass of hidden poison. Only Bednarczyk’s laid back and loveable gravedigger manages to steal the attention away from Fox with his uncaring throwing of skulls from the underground – even if only for a second.

Staged in Guildford’s beautiful Holy Trinity Church, the ethereal location here isn’t quite made the most of. What could have been used as a background to Hamlet’s confused relationship with his religion, is left largely untouched. Though sometimes wild and epic, it gives home to the unseen ghost of Hamlet’s father: read by the offstage, booming voice of Fox’s actual father, Edward Fox – his body is omitted for a constantly travelling blue spotlight that is clouded in reverb and smoky effects. With the real-life family casting an interesting touch, it is a shame not to see their relationship played out in front of us.

He should have been a Hamlet to remember: but with nothing truly novel in Littler’s production, not even Fox’s will can pull this one out of the ground.