RSC Hamlet

Hamlet, RSC, BBC2 26 Dec

Shakespeare's plays are always ready to be re-made to suit the tastes of the period whether it be Bowdler taking out the bits that Victorians didn't like, surreal experimentation in the 60's with Midsummer Night's Dream on stilts or West Side Story retelling Romeo and Juliet in New York gangland. In the age of diversity and politically correct equality, this production offers us Voltimand and Cornelia rather than Cornelius.
But I'm only joking, such pointless and irrelevant tampering only makes any comment on it pointless and irrelevant. Every worthwhile production brings more to the play than that minor cosmetic amendment. Some of my favourites in the past have included Ophelia coming in dressed in Polonius' clothes after the murder of her father, Hamlet setting fire to paper boats on a pool of water (literally 'burning his boats') during 'To be or not to be' and the brilliant Fran Lewis as a female Hamlet in last year's Southsea Shakespeare Actor's renewal. In this one, amongst other things, we had an up-to-date setting that used closed circuit tv, camcorders and video diaries to sinister, forensic effect but eschewed the existing knife-crime theme and updated it to gun crime.
As is always possible in a dark play, and this was suitably dark when it needed to be, lighting was used brilliantly, both in the opening scenes and at the beginning of 'To be or not to be'. Some unorthodox camera angles made us aware than a film-maker was at work as well as actors and a playwright but usually to good effect and not quite enough to overdo it. Perhaps once too often the mirror that was shattered by the gunshot that killed Polonius was returned to for a character to presumably reflect upon their shattered nature, or the broken condition of Denmark, fitting visual metaphor though it certainly was. Perhaps the best cinematic effect was the reflection in glass of Polonius and Claudius eavesdropping on Hamlet and Ophelia.
The accumulating power of the play makes it difficult for any production to miss every opportunity it provides and even a bad Hamlet is usually good in parts. This was excellent, with especial highlights being the bedroom confrontation between Hamlet and Gertrude and the Gravedigger scene. Some productions seem to emphasize certain themes over others. Here, for me, it was the tactical game of wits, the espionage and counterplot, between Hamlet and Claudius that was foregrounded as the main premise of the many-layered text.
But not all of it was immediately convincing. While David Tennant did a fine madcap Prince, he was distraught and 'floored' by the occasion a little bit melodramatically from the outset and hardly needed an 'antic disposition' to be put on since he seemed disturbed enough already. As such it was not so easy to believe that he had the original nobility to have proved a great king if events had not gone so awry.
Laertes didn't look quite as hot-blooded and swash-buckling as he might need to be but there is always the difficult question of his attachment to Ophelia to deal with and so maybe we are not looking for the 100% action hero in him.
Oliver Ford Davies provided just about the best Polonius I've seen, giving the best comic part in Shakespeare a considered performance rather than the overdone battiness it sometimes lures actors into. He was stately, dignified and sporadically aware that he was in fact 'losing it' to incipient senility.
Penny Downie was a well-judged, excellent Gertrude and Mariah Gale another fine, distracted Ophelia. Patrick Stewart was never less than exemplary as the statesman cracking under pressure as Claudius realizes gradually that he's not going to be able to hold it all together.
If Hamlet isn't the greatest work in English Literature then something else has to be and I can't think of what that something else might be but even so, although it's hardly for me to find fault, one does sometimes wonder if the players and 'play within the play' doesn't take up more time than it needs to. During this time, we do see other themes develop, like Hamlet and Ophelia together, and it offers other insights, too, but there is just the suspicion that Shakespeare was indulging himself a little bit with a theatrical interlude.
So, Gregory Doran's film was a fine thing and the undoubted highlight of Christmas which doesn't these days involve too much television at all for me. David Tennant is a qualified success in it, brilliant in places but not establishing beyond all reasonable doubt that he would have 'proved most royally'.
Should any similar projects occur to the BBC in the future, don't hesitate -Go, bid the film-makers shoot.