Poor Benedict Cumberbatch. One moment he’s a highly regarded actor, the next he has descended to the wretched level of A-list celeb, telly personality and object of widespread public adoration. Every evening he appears on the pavement outside the Barbican, after doing the Dane, to face hordes of screaming fans, ululating like a chorus of Apache squaws. And what is his reaction to all this? Remarkably polite, all things considered.
Far from scorning his hysterical fans, like some snobbish, sneering, sexist, unbearably pompous theatre critic, and requesting them to be somewhat scanter of their maiden presence, he’s clearly pleased this particular Hamlet production is reaching out to a wider audience, the sort of people who don’t usually go to the theatre. He has addressed them politely, asking them not to film with their mobiles during his performance, as all those flashing red lights in the auditorium can put you right off your soliloquy, and instead has suggested, showing a mastery of 21st-century idiom, that they should just “hashtag the shit out of this”. There’s the value of a public-school education for you.
The circus aside, what is his Hamlet actually like? Has it shaped up after some less than flattering preview notices? Well, his Hamlet is very, very good. It’s the rest of the production that’s often sadly ropy.
Cumberbatch is an electrifying presence from the start, sitting on the bare and darkened stage amid a lot of packing crates, the archetypal student in skinny black, listening to a melancholy crooner on an old-fashioned gramophone singing about fools and kings. The curtain then goes up on a palatial Austro-Hungarian, or possibly Ruritanian, interior circa 1880, by Es Devlin. There are portraits of noble ancestors on the walls, along with muskets and sabres.
He is suitably compelling when sulking amid the false, murderous jollity of the court; then, once he puts his antic disposition on, he’s a brilliant picture of mad, but privately despairing, twinkle-toed capers and impressive physical comedy, hopping up onto the banqueting table at one point with the nimbleness of Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood. The soliloquies are movingly and passionately delivered, crystal clear in their meaning.
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Yet you start to notice that the cuts made here are pretty hefty, often with Hamlet’s most complex linguistic feats missing — there’s no talk of “miching mallecho”, or any such phrases that might frighten (or intrigue) the audience. If not exactly dumbed down, the text has certainly been smoothed out, so the tragedy zips along like a fast-moving, action-packed movie, but in the process loses some of the philosophical richness and brooding depths of the whole that are surely at the heart of the play.
During one soliloquy, other characters continue to move across the shadowy stage in slow motion, showing how the prince’s mind moves at light speed while others lumber about him like sloths or dinosaurs — as if he can think entire speeches in the time it takes Claudius to walk three paces. Other touches are less convincing. This being a modern(ish)-dress production, the weapon of choice is often a semi-automatic, and every time someone waves one about, they chamber a round to show they mean business — another echo of the movies. It gets tiresome.
In the second half, the handsome set is invaded by an unsubtle splurge of dark rubble and landslide mud. At one point, we see what I think is supposed to be a full moon outside the window, though it looks like a macrophotograph of a chocolate Hobnob. And why does Hamlet briefly put on an Indian headdress from the dressing-up box, before opting for a toy-soldier look? It’s racy and colourful, but it doesn’t feel significant.
Much the biggest problem with Lyndsey Turner’s production, however, is simply the other actors. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Laertes, at least, is a powerful, angry presence, but as for the rest — oh, dear. The diction of the Ghost is wildly eccentric, even for one of the undead. Ciaran Hinds looks the part as Claudius, but too many of his lines are lost in beardy mumbling. Sian Brooke’s Ophelia is baffling: instead of a sweet, romantic teenage ingénue, she plays her as a slumped, spiritless, stoop-shouldered, mousy librarian, shuffling about looking entirely lost from the start — and when she does go mad, there’s no great sense of tragic fall.
Anastasia Hille’s Gertrude is a little more convincing, but the crucial bedroom confrontation between her and Hamlet, which ought to be lacerating as well as post-Freudian uncomfortable, doesn’t have a lot of energy. Jim Norton’s Polonius is an entirely amiable old buffer, for all his comic pomposity, but considerably reduced; the final bloodbath is oddly hurried; and the last few lines between a gawky Horatio and a wooden Fortinbras could almost come out of am-dram.
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Still, the central performance from Cumberbatch is impressive, and despite the weaknesses in some other roles, there are times when this production does the important job of reminding you of what you know already: that Hamlet is just such a funny, fathomless, extraordinary, unbelievably great play. This may sound like stating the bleedin’ obvious — but not every production achieves it, and it’s a big plus.
Hamlet
Barbican, London EC2
