I managed to get myself a return ticket for Hamlet yesterday, but I found that I was very negatively surprised by this production. Not that it's bad, I'd rate it at about 3 stars, but it's far from as good as reviews and comments had led me to believe, even though I always try not to believe the hype. Maybe we just expect different things when it comes to Shakespeare? Nevertheless I'm surprised that this scored as highly as it did with the critics, and that I don't remember reading a single review that mentioned what I thought was this production's fatal flaw.

But let me first say that there were some things that I really liked, such as Doran's command of the thrust stage space, Penny Downie's Gertrude, Oliver Ford Davies' Polonius and Patrick Stewart's Claudius. I usually find that whenever I see Stewart in anything I'm always aware that I'm watching a performance, and though this was also the case here, at least I found myself thinking "what a good performance", so I didn't really mind that this time.

Now for the rub: David Tennant's Hamlet. I've only watched a handful of episodes of him as Doctor Who, but I still saw many, many of that character's traits in his Hamlet. Though this was a little distracting it wasn't a huge problem, but it is partially connected to what is the real problem. His poor verse speaking. No, actually it isn't fair to call it "poor" for it wasn't, it was just practically non-existent. For some reason Hamlet's lines are here spoken as if they're prose, and quite frankly it was painful to hear (and very rushed at times), as for every line I could easily invoke the memory of any number of actors speaking it as it was written, in verse.

Let me hasten to say that I don't in any way think that this is due to a lack of ability, I firmly believe that it's a deliberate decision. Not sure whose idea it is, but I can only imagine that actor and director must have agreed on it together, as it's such a huge departure from the text. But why? I suppose it makes the lines more digestible to the Shakespeare novices, and it does make the character seem more contemporary, but at what cost? It was especially jarring as other characters still spoke verse, and never more so than when John Woodvine as the Player King made the Bard's words soar as they should, bringing a huge smile of sheer joy to my face.

To those of you that haven't managed to get tickets to this one: don't worry, despite what some people are saying you're not missing something unmissable. I'll be back in November for the last performance, and I hope that with some time to prepare I can actually close my ears to the verse issue and focus on the performance instead, hopefully that will make it more enjoyable. I'll be most interested to see if they've gone down the same route when it comes to Love's Labour's Lost, hard though it is to imagine, but then again I would have thought the same about Hamlet. It's going to be an interesting comparison that one, as I'll be seeing LLL at the Kingston Rose the day before I see it in Stratford.

//Jenny

Do you mean the squealing and gurning? He's been like that ever since he did Casanova.

I liked it a lot but perhaps that's because it was the first time I had seen Hamlet and I am rather a novice at Shakespeare! I thought David Tennant was great...a sort of Hamlet for our ages, played as a rather truculent teenager. Particularly liked the bit where he was told to go and see his mother and he wafted the courtier away with a "presently" and then carried on chatting! Only at one small point (when he was directing the play within a play) did I glimpse Dr Who....I was surprised how different he was!

I'm slowly falling into the trap of really liking Hamlet because there's just SO MANY different things you can do with him/it. I'm aware this is a slippery slope that could lead to a lifetime of writing academic texts about the one play and never even saying everything I have to say on the subject before dying (okay, I might be exaggerating a little, but the Dane does have a certain pull for certain academics XD), but I can't quite convince myself to quit while I'm ahead. While all the world may not necessarily care for Tennant's Hamlet, there is certainly room in the world for Tennant's Hamlet, and there's no reason why it shouldn't go into the textbooks alongside all the others, as an example of that particular sort of Hamlet.

Mind you, I'd rather see Geoffrey Tennant's Hamlet, but that's neither here nor there. XD Internet cookies if you get that!

Har har, very good.

Coming over to the dark side, Weez? Join us Hamlet devotees, we welcome you.
I liked Tennant's performance but wasn't bowled over. I didn't notice that he was prosing the verse as it were, but I did fee he was rushing it. He knows how to speak the ole iambic, Jenny. I saw him in R&J at Stratford and he was practically the only one who did in that production! So, yes, something directorial.

I still remember Kelly Reilly talking doggedly in iambic during 'Othello'. I wasn't half glad when Othello finally took it upon himself to smother the wench. *shudders*

I don't think I'll ever be a true Hamlet devotee; my heart completely belongs to 'Henry V'. It's just my head getting a little too interested in Emo-Dane for my liking.

my only problem with this production lies with the slashing of the text. I think it has been clumsily done and has restricted the actors and their abilities to show all the light and shade of the play. I think David Tennant is a thrilling and exciting performer. He has understood so much about the role and the place of Hamlet as the person bringing the audience into the play. He has an expressive voice and face, and is naturally athletic - anyone remember him in Comedy of Errors? I think snidey little comments about gurning are somewhat out of place. Of course you are totally welcome to your views, but I do sense a bit of tall poppy syndrome here.

I sat next to a 7 year old who actually did not know what was going to happen next. Did not laugh at the jokes before they happened. Such a change and very stimulating. If the Doctor gets them there, good for the Doctor.

When our turns we have all followed for years get famous and all those little girls are keening around after them, the old faithfuls seem to have a bit of a problem. Of the 27 Hamlets I have seen in the past 31 years he rates among the top three, and I believe will find greater treasures to mine as time goes on. Can't you just enjoy it?

You can imagine the moment at the very first production of Hamlet when he doesn't kill Claudius as he is praying! Was there a gasp of disbelief? Did people yell out, 'Get him Hamlet!'?

I must say that I did enjoy the obvious surprise of those that saw the play for the first time, it was wonderful to hear them react to what was happening, not knowing what was to come for them. Still, there can at times be surprises even for us that know this play well; this summer I saw a production where Hamlet's father was shown committing suicide, with Claudius entirely blameless and alive at the end!

If I ever direct a production of 'Hamlet', I'm totally cutting out every reference to Claudius actually doing the murder. For some reason, I find his character much less objectionable than Hamlet's; I also find myself slightly unfairly skewed thanks to Matt Haig's book 'The Dead Father's Club' where it's completely open for debate as to whether or not our protagonist is actually seeing his father's ghost, whether the uncle killed the father, whether the father's ghost is telling the truth about being killed by the uncle, and so on and so forth. If we know Claudius killed Old Hamlet then it's a fairly straight forward revenge tragedy. If we only have Hamlet's word to go on, it'll add a whole new dynamic. Will people like my version? Maybe not. Will it entertain me to do it anyway? DEFINITELY.

There's a novel which gives the whole back story of the affair between Gertrude and Claudius and paints them both in a good light while Old father Hamlet comes out as a tyrant..it's American, quite well known and ends with the first line of the play. Help me out here, someone with a better memory ...Anyway, that's what you should read and then just cut the one speech, Claudius praying.

I've always loved it that we don't know if Claudius did it, as it were, until quite far in . But I think that a contemporary audience did - they would believe the ghost and Hamlet's unsureness as to the truth of the ghost would be a sign of his weakness not his modern scepticism. I may be wrong here. But then, Weez, isn't part of the point of the play that we are watching a man trying to do right among people who do wrong? How do we deal with evil in the world on this very personal level? Are we to understand that Hamlet fails? Or does he in fact succeed by not being like the bloke in The Revenger's Tragedy? This play balances on the edge of the medieval and modern worlds.
I can appreciate your love of Henry V but compared to Hamlet, that play is a straightforward presentation of kingship. Henry shows all the characteristics of a good, strong king. He is like Fortinbras, a winner. He has to use some clever stuff and tough stuff to do it, but that is justified. Hamlet won't cheat. In order to lie, he has to feign madness. Isn't he more the man of our time?

I've not read it but the novel you mean may be John Updike's Gertrude and Claudius. There were earlier plays of the Hamlet by other authors weren't there? I suppose we'll never know how many of the audience would have had some familiarity with the plot. Just as we don't know now - despite what some critics seem to think when reviewing, I assume that at least half of any audience won't have seen a classic play before.

Well, that's the thing with Hamlet; you can play it as a straight revenge tragedy of a man who is trying to get some kind of justice and pretends to be mad to aid his ends. But then you start getting into the questions, like "was Hamlet just pretending to be mad, or was he actually mad on some level?" for example, and then you realise that you totally could mess the entire thing around and present a completely different Hamlet from a completely different angle.

If you wanted to really play up that Hamlet was actually mad, you could make the decision that he was mad before the play started; other people saw the Ghost, but only Hamlet heard what it had to say. Or DID he? It's a damn long play, whenever you do it you're going to have to cut it, so why not cut out Claudius being the murderer and see if you can really make your audience doubt what Hamlet knows? Maybe go further by making the Ghost a wholly silent presence on stage, or perhaps have a "possessed" Hamlet speak the lines, so as far as any murder accusations go, we truly have only Hamlet's word for it.

Thanks for the info, Lynette and armadillo; this book sounds exactly how I've been picturing the Claudius/Gertrude/Old Hamlet relationship in my head, so I'll be VERY keen to read it. :3

Yes, that's the book I meant, ta Armadillo. I'll come and see your Hamlet, Weez!

The RSC Hamlet was indeed vastly over-rated. It was quite clear from the start that the actors couldn't speak the verse - stresses all in the wrong place - the usual words and phrases caught them out right from the start - removed ground, canonized bones, etc, etc. The only actor who spoke the lines properly was the Player King - a commanding performance.
The real problem was the way the text had been adapted. Placing the Nunnery Scene and To Be Or Not To Be early threw everything out of kilter. Also having Fortinbras on stage, but as a mute character, was a nonsense. All the Voltemand and Cornelius background (sorry, Cornelia here - to do the Condy Rice parallel - geddit?) was included - and quite rightly too - it is an important part of the political situation. But then to have Fortinbras saying nothing - the scene with the Norwegian captain was the absolute nadir - was bizarre in the extreme. If one is going down that route, then cut Voltemand and Cornelius. To end with Horatio's 'Good night, sweet prince...' is reverting to the discredited Victorian practice, as we then miss Horatio's key explanation of 'accidental judgments' etc, actually a translation of Scaliger's definition of tragedy - 'purposes mistook, fallen on the inventors' heads', etc. The remark I heard leaving the theatre summed it up pefectly - 'Who was that chap who came on at the end who forgot his lines?'
And of course there was the usual modish nonsense - shooting Polonius - and as all the glass shattered everyone burst out laughing the night I was there. What's wrong with 'whipped out his rapier'?
The sold-out houses instilled a perceptible sense of everyone on stage being very pleased with theselves and quite unjustifiably.
An empty, vacuous evening.

One or two people are being a bit silly in their comments. Yes, of course, there was a lot of hype around this production because of the inclusion of David Tennant. Personally speaking, my own hopes were low but he captured at least some aspects of the character - who can do all? - and the production was very far from three-stars. It was very entertaining, did not drag and there was fine work from Patrick Stewart and Oliver Ford-Davies, among others, with the best Ophelia and the best dumb show I've seen. The verse-speaking was not bad for chrissake - it isn't Gielgud but those days are gone, for better or worse,. Styles change, something the man himself recognised. Lighten up.

After the disappointment of Macbeth's Patrick Stewart (I might be in very small minority, but apart from the dinner scene i didn't like any of the director touches. In places, i thought it was disastrous. In other border on laughable. Russian military clothes with Scottish feudal titles *Doh!* ) i am not rushing to this Hamlet. If i get tickets, fine. If not, i am not that bothered.

Even though i do see the value of changes, i am big fan of a good old production without re-working, and re-settings. I think "modernising" the Bard is like when companies do re-packaging. It is much cheaper for them to repack a well known product rather than come up with a new one.
Can't people write a modern Hamlet? why do we have to change Hamlet (or any character) to suit our days?

Anyway, enough rants lol.

For those of you interested in another point of view on Claudius, here is a link to a poem by C.P. Cavafy:

http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=163&cat=4

A thought provoking post: do we 'change' Hamlet or do we see Hamlet differently according to our age and times? When Hamlet first comes on in this Tennant prod, he comes on dressed and with the demeanor of a Business studies student destined for one of the accountancy companies or banks which are enduring such tough times at the moment. I was most amused by this. Of course, the energy of Tennant, his 'otherness' couldn't be contained and he goes on to become the wayward prince, dressed in a casual, anarchic way. I wished that they continued with the business suit, which could transform somehow as the play progresses.

The whole Fortinbras thing is badly handled, I quite agree. He is very important as a foil to Hamlet and should end the play. But that is just my opinion.

It is a very entertaining production and notable for a brilliant Gertrude and Polonius, and a chilling Claudius, again imo......

Why do you go to the theatre? You seem not to have liked any productions since the 1960s. Or at least, I don't remember you praising any productions here. It's an expensive hobby if you don't actually enjoy it , I'd have thought. I'm sorry you disliked the show (you and Jenny do seem to be in a minority of two - I didn't read a single bad review though not all were 5 stars) but I'm 99% sure that you went into the auditorium expecting to dislike it and were rather pleased to prove yourself right.

As for the wrong-ness of modernising Hamlet - surely there are enough productions that directors can do whatever they like. if you don't like this production, there will be another along in a few weeks. And, it's a cliche, but I might as well be the first to say it here, Shakespeare's plays were all performed in modern dress. Or do you think Burbage wore a medieval Danish tunic? If Shakespeare can do this, why can't we? If all productions were traditional school play version, who'd ever want to see it more than one. As for Fortinbras, it was obvious that this production assumed that a larger than usual section of the audience wouldn't have seen it before. I have no problems with simplificiation - nobody is going to follow every nuance of the plot the first tie they see a Shakespearian play and you have to cut it somewhere! There were enough complaints about the late finish without them doing full-text!

I love theatre and have seen some wonderful productions recently - the Judi Dench All's Well, Cheek by Jowl's Troilus & Cressida at the Barbican (though many others disagreed), The Chalk Garden at the Donmar, Ronald Harwood's An English Tragedy (Watford), much under-estimated by the critics, Rosmersholm, Lady from the Sea (Birmingham), etc, etc. But the RSC Hamlet would not be one of them. Of course one cuts 'Hamlet', but including at length all the Voltemand/Cornelius materal and then excluding Fortinbras is irrational to say the least. I did not go to the RSC Hamlet expecting to dislike it. I had high hopes, which made the disappointment the more intense. I hope next week's Love's Labour's Lost, to which I go with no high expectations, as it is the same team, hopefully will again confound preconceptions.

Hi

I have seen this production twice.

First time in previews--I gave it 7/10

Saw it last week and it has got better--in my opinion.

Now it is 9/10

Alnoor

I saw it v early and had an idea it would get better, espesh Tennant. I'm v pleased as seeing it again towards end of run.

I haven't said that directors shouldn't change things. I even said that i see the value of changes. However, that doesn't mean i have to like them. Just as directors are free to change things, i am free to see those productions, and voice my opinion and displeasure if i don't like them.
I like theatre, and that is why i take risks even on productions that i might not like.
This is not directed to you, so, please don't take offence, but i HATE the argument "If you don't like it, don't go to it", because in effect that only encourages the sad status we are experiencing with many revivals and jukebox musicals. I think we should take chances, but also voice our opinions.

The other point you made has great validity, but at the end of the day, theatre is about feelings, and not only logic, and reasoning. I simply don't enjoy, on the whole, the modernising of classic plays.
You can have different takes on the character, which is enjoyable, but dressing them up in current clothes, and projecting some current/recent affairs is not my cuppa. I have to admit though, if i don't the play i find things much more acceptable, but that does not include the Bard since i know most of his plays.

Despite writing over 400 years ago, Shakespeare comes across as SHOCKINGLY contemporary and clued up on the twenty-first century at times. These plays aren't considered classics for some arbitrary reason; they're classics because they're timeless and have worked for just about every audience in history since they first came about. (Okay, some of the lesser ones may be classics purely because they survived, but the good, strong, solid ones survived because they're classics.) Sooo... update away! As long as it's a GOOD production, who cares what jiggerypokery they get up to?

Weez, if you haven't already, go see Six Chs in Search of an Author at Geilgud - has stuff about Hamlet in it. You'd like.

I saw it both in Chichester and London. I got the 'Hamlet' stuff a LOT more the second time round. XD

So I saw this again last night, thinking that as I was now prepared for the oddly absent verse speaking I would be able to enjoy the performances more. Turns out that I was wrong. When being able to concentrate on the acting and not just being continually distracted by the missing verse speaking, I found the performances far less compelling this time round, particularly Stewart, who was doing some sort of acting-by-numbers, and Tennant, whose Hamlet felt entirely superficial. And I wasn't exactly won over by the decision to frequently play Hamlet's lines for laughs.

The verse speaking seemed to come and go, following no discernable pattern of logic, and even the RSC veterans hardly seemed to bother keeping up the verse – the one notable exception being John Woodvine whose verse speaking as the Player King was perfect, and when he had delivered his lines I could hardly contain myself from leaping to my feet and shouting "Well done! Thanks for showing everyone how this should really be done!".

I think this production has been wildly overpraised, especially Tennant's lightweight Hamlet, and after last night I would rate this at a very shaky 3 stars. Anyone who's going to see this in London should better adjust their expectations downwards, else you risk being seriously disappointed.

//Jenny

I'm afraid I have to completely disagree with Jenny here. I went for the final RSC performance on Saturday, having never read or seen Hamlet before (I have seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, though - you can imagine my confusion watching that with no knowledge of the background!), as I wanted to go in blind (I have read and seen plenty of Shakespeare previously, just not this one for some reason).

Anyway, so I went in completely blind, not knowing what to expect, and I was completely blown away. I think David Tennant is absolutely excellent. I loved the questions it left me with, the way his entire demeanour changed within seconds depending on who he was around...at my performance everyone gasped in shock and horror and sighed out in sadness when he shot the gun and Polonius fell into the room.

I appreciate some was cut and certainly there were bits that seemed rushed - and not knowing the play means I don't know whether this was the case or perhaps it is naturally like that, but even so I really am so grateful to have seen it and, in twenty years time, to be able to say 'I saw David Tennant as Hamlet'. He is an astonishing actor who draws your attention whenever he enters the room. He makes me laugh, gasp, cry, empathise. i thought the bedroom scene between Hamlet and Gertrude was especially affecting, when he lay in front of her with his legs spread and she cuddled him to her and stroked his back, drawing him back to infancy for a moment.

I think Mariah Gale did better as Princess of France in LLL than as Ophelia, but I still enjoyed her performance. It was so intriguing to see how, though Hamlet didn't realise it, he was to blame for her madness and subsequent death. Although I found him a most sympathetic character, it was later pointed out to me that in fact he is highly manipulative - starting the process of her eventual death by pretending to be mad and thrusting her away from him. Or was he truly mad? The question of whether he was truly mad, if he had been truly mad at some points - is he simply imagining the reaction of Claudius to the dumbshow?

A production that raises these questions and leaves me wanting more is no bad thing. I like to be left with things to analyse and a want to see the play again.

I am honestly amazed that there are still people alive who talk like this about Shakespeare in performance. If you want to know its in verse, stay at home and read it, as acting has become about far more than simply hitting artificial musical cadences and remembering to pause a little bit after five iambs. Peter Hall agrees with you thoroughly about "speaking verse like verse", which is one of the things that makes him one of the most boring, outdated directors currently working. As you'll see when you see his LLL, he really has nothing more to offer, and directors like Goold, Grandage and Dominic Cooke (none of whom, incidentally, believe in "verse-speaking") have run way, way ahead of him.

To someone who is in the theatre to metronomically tick along with the metre, I can see why Tennant's performance was underwhelming. I would imagine you're the sort of woman who prides yourself on never having cried. But thankfully for the rest of us, theatre has moved on, and moved beyond your Gielgudian preferences.

To address the last two posts- Miriam, I think you're definitely the target audience of this production- it was an excellent 'first time Hamlet'. It told the story, and it told the story exceptionally well, so that even the children (and probably adults) who went to see 'that bloke off the telly' (not my opinion of him, incidentally) appreciated the play properly. Sure, it wasn't the deepest production you'll ever see, but it told a story and it entertained, having something to offer to a very wide audience.

As for verse speaking, it isn't everything, but I think it still has a place, certainly as a starting point for the rhythm of a scene- the lines were written to be scanned in a certain way, and this has to be balanced with normal emphasis; it is, after all, poetry. The most important thing, as far as clarity is concerned, is that the actor speaks in full thoughts- if, as you suggest, there is a little pause after every line, it will make for a very dull and hard to follow performance.

[Sorry about the double post. I registered because I could never seem to reply easily as a guest and now I've done it inadvertantly when trying to post as a registered member!]


"The verse speaking seemed to come and go, following no discernable pattern of logic, and even the RSC veterans hardly seemed to bother keeping up the verse – the one notable exception being John Woodvine whose verse speaking as the Player King was perfect, and when he had delivered his lines I could hardly contain myself from leaping to my feet and shouting "Well done! Thanks for showing everyone how this should really be done!".

I assumed that John Woodvine's style was a conscious directorial choice to enhance the differences between the Players and the court.

"I would imagine you're the sort of woman who prides yourself on never having cried."

What a crass and altogether wanky thing to say, and absolutely s** all to do with the merits or otherwise of verse-speaking.

Maybe not your (conscious) intention, but what a condescending thing to say.

Many apologies- reading that back it sounds dreadful- I certainly didn't mean to suggest that anyone here went just to see Tennant, only that some people will have done, and that (in my opinion) they would appreciate the production and the play for more than just seeing Tennant in the flesh. Nor did I mean to imply that all children went to see the play just to see Tennant.

My intention was just to say that the production told the story well, I thought, and that if you'd not seen Hamlet before, you'd get a lot from it.

Yep, I had never been to see Hamlet before and managed to get both my teenagers along as David Tennant was in it and I loved it....and understood it. I suspect watching Shakespeare could become very frustrating over the years....I have nothing to compare with so came away very happy but I do understand how others feel- the upcoming RSC production of Othello will do well to come up to my high standards of the Donmar production...I feel a bit protective towards that production and as though nothing will quite match it!

I'm looking forward to the upcoming RSC 'Othello'. It'll be nice to see Patrice Naiambana playing a different part, after he managed to play essentially the same character in six different History plays! I think the way to go about things is to try not to think "I don't think anything can ever be better than this one production" and focus more on "I can't wait to see a better production than this one! It's going to be EPIC!". Or is that just a little too much forced optimism? :3

I know its slightly off kilter but i'm more interested in seeing Lenny Henry playing Othello in Northern Broadsides & WYP production.

I think I shall go with a really pessimistic approach and then hope to be surprised by how good it is. That worked well for Terminator 3 (the film)!