1 min read
Rory Kinnear was this week nominated for an Olivier award as best actor for his role as Hamlet in this production.
It is easy to see why. His troubled prince is so frail, so pained, and so "ordinary bloke", dressed in his hoodie and jeans, cigarette in hand for his "To be, or not to be" soliloquy.
Almost everything about this touring National Theatre production, directed by Nicholas Hytner, works brilliantly. But it would be hard not to single out Kinnear (pictured) for his human depiction of one of the most complex characters in literature.
Kinnear plays a spectrum of different Hamlets, teasing out different aspects of the tormented prince. He is cast as an excitable student, struggling to rationalise the murder of his father and the marriage of his mother to his uncle.
But his mood swings are wild and dangerous. He banters with his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then sends them to their deaths with barely a second thought.
He outwits the foolish courtier Polonius (a fantastically bumbling David Calder) and then, when he accidentally kills him, shrugs it off easily as he disposes of the body.
Shakespeare gave many words to the language - assassination, bloody, and amazement among them. He would not have been familiar with "bipolar", or "manic depressive", but he knew the symptoms, and Kinnear's Hamlet is almost a case study.
The production locates Elsinore in the present day. Secret service officers are everywhere, whispering orders into their earpieces. There is a computer on the desk and a bug in Ophelia's Bible.
War is looming, planes are roaring overhead, there is constant surveillance - even at moments of apparent solitude there is always somebody watching.
The television cameras are rolling when the new king Claudius (Patrick Malahide as a polished statesman convincingly capable of murder) makes his coronation address to the nation of Denmark, with his new wife Gertrude (Clare Higgins).
Hytner skillfully brings together all the elements of tragedy and comedy, and the impressive cast, led by Kinnear, match his grasp of the complexities of the play with their performances.
To borrow one of Shakespeare's own words, this is a bloody good Hamlet.
(Tel: 0843 208 6000)