HAMLET

Photo Ellie Kurttz 

Three works by Shakespeare in one year, first the splendid revival of Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Bridge, in a few weeks a third time seeing Sir Peter Hall’s extraordinary production of Britten’s opera of the same and sandwiched between Chichester Festival Theatre’s new and first production of Hamlet, a hard act to follow perhaps? None of it!

One might ask why it has taken so long for CFT to tackle what is perhaps the best known of Shakespeare’s works but on seeing, or should I say experiencing Justin Audibert’s production the wait has certainly been worthwhile. There’s something very special about a director who can make a play, so familiar, feel like something so fresh and so new. At my age you loose track of how many times you have seen the Dane loose his wits, the productions that impressed and the ones that depressed, the re-workings and re-thinkings, the changes of time and place and let’s face it a whole lot of hacked up nonsense presented in the name of theatre. You do take your seats with a sense of trepidation, what now you think.

This time in the intimate space of the Minerva, there is a stately elegance and a sense of gloom, a crown atop a metal plinth, a checkered floor and in the background a shadowy mound and stained drapery. No indication of any specific time or place, just a sense of this being somewhere important. But the simplicity on first viewing of the setting belies the brilliant versatility of designer Lily Arnold and director Audibert’s vision or of Ryan Day’s lighting. The Minerva has never felt so expansive. And when the company gradually make their appearances Arnold’s costumes continue to create a timeless sense of place. There is a uniformity of vision in her work here, but created by plucking style and fashion from across the centuries, threads of Tudor mixed with Victorian and Edwardian, and they are lavish, full blown, couture like a Paris catwalk of perhaps Galliano. It’s a stunning framing for what is to come.

And here we are given a fulsome rendering of the tragedy delivered with passion and precision by a stunning cast. Each and every player on the stage plays with commitment and clarity, not a word is lost, it is a masterpiece of ensemble theatre that once again frames the principal characters with both a sense of style and of realism. This story becomes so captivatingly believable without resorting to trickery or cliche, and it is all the better for that.

There are of course some notable individual performances. Sam Swann is an excellent Horatio and Tim Preston and Jay Saighal have a youthful charm and naivety as Hamlet’s student friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, thrown into the complex plotting.

Ariyon Bakare is utterly compelling as Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and now King of Denmark. It’s a monumental performance of great stature, every movement, every utterance delivered with unnerving reserve and yet power.

Sara Powell and Ariyon Bakare, Photo Ellie Kurttz

Sara Powell’s Gertrude is a calmer or perhaps more conflicted representation of the queen than we often see, and in that is rather more interesting and in contrast Eve Ponsonby’s Ophelia is from the start clearly more fragile and vulnerable.

Photo Ellie Kurttz

Ryan Hutton’s Laertes is beautifully played, full of youthful passion and a keen sense of knowing right from wrong. And how masterfully the man can fight, the tension created in that penultimate moment struck a real sense of fear in me, credit to the work of fight director Cristian Cardenas, I was very glad not to be in the front row!

Keir Charles, Photo Ellie Kurttz

First highlight of the whole must go to Keir Charles who played the role of Polonius so wonderfully. Not a kindly buffoon as we so often see but a pedantic politico, trying hard to keep a sense of order in a world of disorder. His wiry presence, his elegant tails and tiny ruff, his almost apologetic demeanour working so well against the chaos forming around him. A masterpiece of both acting and direction.

Giles Terera, Photo Ellie Kurttz

Finally on to the eponymous Hamlet, here played with much advance publicity and ensuing expectation, by Giles Terera. Terera takes on Hamlet and delivers. There is a tangible sense of gradual decline and of grief, there is a maturity and still a sense of youth, there is love and at the same time a need for bloody revenge. This is a fully rounded portrayal of a fragmented man and one that eclipses many of the previous Princes of Denmark that I have seen.

Audibert and his entire company have pulled it off, the question “to see or not to see” well see it of course!

Andrew Kay

16 September

The Minerva, Chichester Festival Theatre

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