Review: HAMLET, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

As if the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse wasn't already atmospheric enough, it feels like a special treat to witness their first candlelit Hamlet. After directing the colourful A Midsummer Night's Dream just across the courtyard at the Globe, Sean Holmes goes darker and moodier with our favourite revenge tragedy. George Fouracres is the title character. Known mostly for his comedic work (he was Flute in Holmes's Dream), he proves himself an eclectic actor and an electric Brummie anti-hero. The play's not the thing here, George Fouracres is.

A single pearl earring, a long inky coat, a vintage patterned shirt, and tall Doc Martens boots, he is magnetic. Enviably cunning and admirably witty, Fouracres's portrayal is exceptionally self-aware. His mind works faster than his tongue can follow and he keeps his wits about him as he is slain by grief. Holmes doesn't play it safe, opting for a challenge to the status quo with his production and responds to the evergreen question, "Is Hamlet really mad?". On this occasion, he is definitely not. A grieving, depressed, cocky, slightly pretentious mess of a man - sure. But not mad. Fouracres shines as a Prince whose personality goes beyond his mourning.

He offers a deeply sarcastic and arrogant son to a mother, Gertrude (Polly Frames), who can't keep her hands off her newly wed former brother-in-law (Irfan Shamji). His romantic interest Ophelia (Rachel Hannah Clarke) delights in the promise of love before she's brutally discarded in his vengeful plot. It's interesting what Holmes does with Polonius (John Lightbody). The king's counsellor seems to become a puppet-master, pulling the strings in a restrainedly flamboyant fashion. He soothes Claudius's ego and comforts his fears. All the while - and sometimes in the same breath - he establishes his daughter as a pawn to be used and abused.

Fueled by pain, Hamlet might be casually cruel to Ophelia to spite Claudius, but her father is brutal in his design. She goes from a giggling, naive girl to being deceived and exploited in a scheme that outclasses her and strokes the egos of men until she is the one who loses it entirely. Gertrude follows suit. Frame gives her character a sweet sense of humanity and looks genuinely smitten with Claudius at the start of the show. She is far from detached from her only son, and despairs in seeing his growing lack of empathy.

Velvets and brocade sit side by side with dark jeans and trainers as we observe the fall of the House of Denmark. By the end, Holmes throws in dashes of fevered dreams suddenly breaking the fourth wall with a jolly Irish gravedigger whose spade is a guitar and a priest who keeps the rhythm with an egg shaker but misplaces his accent halfway through. A femur and a skull become a percussion kit. It's a bit of a weird moment.

White marble becomes progressively more stained and derelict, a visual allegory of the royal family. A fountain-y looking pond is the centrepiece of Grace Smart's understatedly grand set. The characters offer water as blessings and curses, making it a central point in the narrative until it all ends and our tragic hero joins his parents in their dying pool. The other dead watch on in a macabre tableau that looks like a dysfunctional family portrait.

This Hamlet would make fun of you for listening to pop music while he reads the shockingly great poetry he writes. He doesn't get away with murder, but he gets away with this.

Hamlet runs at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until 9 April.

Photo credit: Johan Persson

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