BWW Reviews: HAMLET, Greenwich Playhouse, September 15 2011

Can one ever have too much of Hamlet? Having seen The National Theatre's near four-hour production last year, "Maybe" would have been my answer, but Bruce Jamieson's two hours version at the Greenwich Playhouse (until 9 October) turns that maybe into a yes, cutting scenes and speeches to inject pace and urgency throughout. On a small stage, that allows the enmities to stew then boil over at close quarters not just between the actors, but between the audience and the actors, this approach suits its environment perfectly. All the set-pieces are present of course, including a beautifully lit ghost on the ramparts and Hamlet and Laertes' sword fight that screeches and clangs, as metal crashes on metal and ego clashes with ego.

Robin Holden's Hamlet is no angst-ridden lovelorn teenager consumed by grief, but a man of action, an angel of vengeance, who sets his trap in the play within the play and then carries out his plan to dispose of his father's usurper with the ruthless certainty of youth. Bruce Jamieson's Claudius is a self-satisfied bully, strutting about like a Danish Mussolini in his braided uniform, a fitting victim for Hamlet's rage, but an unlikely lover for Jane Stanton's delicate and sensitive Gertrude. Elana Martin's Ophelia sings her distress in a voice that complements her youthful beauty and idealism, ultimately crushed by the power politics of which she is the innocent victim.

The principals get fine support from a cast that draw out the humour underpinning the tragedy,. There's plenty of laughs in the posturing of Polonious, the Tweedledum and Tweedledeeness of Rosencrantz and Guldenstern and the camp stylings of the travelling players, that might have been buried in the longueurs of a lengthier production.

Shakespeare always demands choices from directors and actors - the Galleon Theatre Company have made theirs and deliver an accessible, nuanced and faithful Hamlet that won't please everyone, but clearly reveals exactly why this play stands so high in the pantheon of English drama.          

Photograph courtesy of Robert Gooch.