Review: HAMLET, St Paul's Church, Covent Garden

We're in an England of the near-future, living under a new autocratic King with a compliant media telling him what he wants to hear. Hamlet doesn't. He makes plain his disgust at his uncle Claudius's usurping of his father and of his almost immediate marriage to his mother, putting the Prince in a dangerous place in a dangerous world.

Hamlet's mind is imbalanced, but so too his identity, a man to some, but a woman to others (including himself) he doesn't fit into a world that wants such nuance swept away. And away is where Hamlet goes - until he returns to exact his revenge and find himself in his demise.

Iris Theatre have been producing plays in the churchyard (and church) of St Paul's for over a decade now - and it doesn't get any easier. We're still efficiently marshalled from one set to another (good work from Mike Leopold) with video screens to supplement the action. Daniel Winder directs with his customary brio and, though the absence of references to Denmark jars a little, England's current political state allows the metaphors and parallels to slide out of the Shakespeare without undue heavy-handedness.

The big problem is sound. I (and I checked so I know I'm not alone) had trouble hearing what was being said. Battling extraneous noise cannot be easy, but audibility is a function not of volume, but of pitch and pace, particularly in the cavernous space of the church that can swallow words, even sentences, whole. It cannot be right to be able to hear some actors with comfort - and others not at all.

Jenet Le Lacheur is a splendidly unhinged Hamlet, smart and sassy, his/her illicit affair with Horatio (a loyal Harold Addo, eyes always on his prince) given a central role in the unfolding tragedy. That does rather undercut the role of Ophelia (Jenny Horsthuis), now somewhat superfluous, her drowning, always a little distanced as it is reported, now feeling more like an unexplored and separate side plot.

Paula James gives everything in her role as Polonius, but the famous "Neither a borrower nor lender be" speech and the apparatchik's comical pomposity just do not sit right in a mother's mouth. Flipping genders can often work in finding new dynamics in a familiar text or in creating hitherto unseen tensions, but this one didn't.

One should always acknowledge the challenge of finding a take on the most produced play in history and that every newly envisioned Hamlet adds yet more to its psychological and political depth. In this production, that contribution comes almost exclusively from Le Lacheur as the conflicted Prince, a fine performance in a show that does not always overcome the specificities of its conception and execution.

Hamlet is at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden until 27 July.

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