Why?
It’s madness, of course, yet there is certainly a method in it. Theatreland went Hamlet mad this week with the news that Rada is to stage a new production of Shakespeare’s longest play starring Tom Hiddleston, everyone’s favourite super-villain, which will be directed by another superstar, Kenneth Branagh. It’s all the more thrilling because the theatre is small (Rada’s 160-seater in central London), the run is short at three weeks and, shock horror, no one can buy a ticket. Instead you have to apply for tickets by ballot and, yes, that even goes for the press.
It’s all aimed at raising money for Rada, which it certainly will. But why Hamlet? Haven’t we put that poor depressed guy through enough already? This year we’ve had Andrew Scott (Moriarty to you and me) doing lots of dramatic pausing in Robert Icke’s modern surveillance version, which began at the Almeida in Islington and is now in the West End. Then, in October, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet will be back from the dead for one night only in cinemas when the National Theatre re-screens its livestream from the 2015 production.
You don’t need to be Sherlock (although it may help) to realise that something’s up. Hamlet has become the go-to play for ambitious young actors in need of gravitas. To be, or not to be, they think, mulling over the question for all of two seconds before deciding that, yes, ’tis nobler to be. But do we really need another Hamlet? After all, the play is more Scandi dour than noir. No one, other than Yorick, has any fun in it. The only Hamlet from recent years that I’d like to see again was the unexpectedly joyous 2016 production from the RSC that starred Paapa Essiedu. Don’t know how that happened. He wasn’t even big on telly. The ballot for tickets to Hamlet is open until 6pm on Sunday. See rada.ac.uk
What they say
“Hamlet always speaks loudly to the world. And at present it roars. It is a play that talks of power grabs and demagogues. It’s about personality and theatricality, and the tools of politics and performance. This is reflected in the media every day. Shakespeare just happened to write about it 500 years ago.”
Kenneth Branagh
