Theatre review: Hamlet (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

From Sir Andrew Aguecheek straight to Hamlet is an unusual career progression but it's the one George Fouracres has taken since joining the Globe's ensemble cast last summer. After two standout comic turns the announcement he'd be playing Shakespeare's most famous tragic lead was welcome news to me, especially after the last Hamlet I saw actively played against any trace of humour or likeability in the character. Sean Holmes' production is the first time the play's been tackled indoors in the Swanamaker, and the first in the venue since the current Artistic Director played the role in her opening season. And there's some similarities between this and the Michelle Terry version in a general approach that avoids one overarching conceit; but Holmes' production both takes this experimentation with ideas several steps further, and results in, for my money at least, a much more entertaining - if far from cohesive - evening overall.

Hamlet's father has died, and his uncle Claudius (Irfan Shamji) has taken over the throne of Denmark - he's also married his brother's widow, Hamlet's mother Gertrude (Polly Frame.) Hamlet isn't particularly impressed by any of this but seems satisfied to wander the palace in a general emo state in protest, until his father's ghost appears to him. It tells him Claudius murdered him to steal his crown, and demands revenge.

I was excited to see a strong comic actor take on Hamlet because the most memorable portrayals (in a good way) are usually those that embrace the prince's sense of humour - he's both the most genuinely witty of Shakespeare's tragic leads and someone who uses self-deprecating humour as a coping or deflecting mechanism. All of these are there in Fouracres' interpretation: In fact it's not often the first "O that this too too solid flesh would melt" soliloquy gets a laugh as well, but in a production that makes use of the hallways surrounding the lower gallery, it manages just that as Fouracres pops his head through the windows behind the audience to introduce himself. Holmes generally likes his ensemble to use their own accents, so we get the most pronounced Black Country accent I've heard on any Hamlet (if not on any person, ever.) Fouracres sometimes plays up to the idea of it being a comedy accent, but as so often happens having someone use their own accent simply opens up the familiar language to feel new and heartfelt.

Once the ghost has made its demands, Hamlet announces he's going to feign madness as part of his plan, so one of the obvious questions about any portrayal is whether that's all he's doing, or if the character's mind has snapped for real. Fouracres suggests that while he's very consciously continuing to put on a show for the court, the madness is increasingly real. Sometimes Hamlet is described as a character who finds himself as the lead in a Jacobethan revenge tragedy and is completely ill-equipped to carry out that role, and for me that was the defining trait of Fouracres' take: He's already out of his depth when Claudius names him heir and he has to wear a crown around the court* - he's visibly uncomfortable when people try to bow and scrape to him.

So the arrival of his father's ghost to demand revenge is only tipping him further out of his depth. For me the most telling part of the performance is after the troupe of Players have arrived, and Hamlet bemoans his inability to show genuine emotion as well as the actors fake it. Fouracres starts to deliver his lines in an exaggerated, hammy style to emulate the Players, but he can't keep it up and ends up laughing at his own attempts to react in the "correct" way. It's part of what tips him over into insanity and, despite being a generally likeable Hamlet because of the comic touches, he's capable of turning genuinely nasty. It's most obvious in his treatment of his mother and Ophelia (Rachel Hannah Clarke,) the latter bearing the brunt of his madness both real and feigned. Now this, in a production that generally avoids the commonly perceived views of characters, is a very interesting dynamic: Hamlet and Ophelia aren't a budding relationship stopped in its tracks by the story's events; they're already exes, both of whom are convinced they're the injured party in the breakup. And Fouracres' aggressiveness even sometimes extends to his interactions with the audience - many questions, like "Am I a coward?" are directed repeatedly to the audience, making it clear a response is demanded and he won't move on until he gets it.

Perhaps the biggest sign that this is a Hamlet with some genuine madness though is in the way that insanity extends to the entire production. This has the feel of a show not micromanaged by Holmes to a specific vision of his own (in fact dramaturg Zoë Svendsen is credited as co-director) but one where ideas were taken from all the cast and creatives about how the characters should be approached, and everything was up for grabs. At times the varying approaches really don't gel: This could be one of the most demented shows ever to play in this venue. And this is a venue that stages Webster. But out of the many ideas thrown around many really do work, and even those that don't feel worth the attempt.

Irfan Shamji is one of the most effortlessly charming actors to appear on stage in recent years so I was interested to see how he'd tackle the slickly villainous Claudius; he takes a while to find his stride but once he's exposed by the play-within-a-play reveals himself as someone who's made a vicious play for power only to find himself completely out of his depth when that power sometimes comes with problems (either that, or I was just reading that into the show in light of current affairs.) In a colour, gender and age-blind production it's also interesting to see a Claudius around the same age group as his nephew (not entirely going against the text though; it's not entirely implausible that there was a big age gap between brothers, and his youth could contribute to his lack of preparedness for the role of king.)

And on the subject of age, we don't get the ghost of Hamlet Sr arriving as he was when he died, but precisely as he's described in the text, in the full battle regalia of his youth. Specifically, we get a half-naked Ciarán O'Brien as a gladiator, who doesn't just return in the closet scene to remind Hamlet of his oath, but actively attacks him, almost drowning him. Because the centrepiece of Grace Smart's design is a decorative marble pond that becomes less decorative as the evening goes on, a repository for props and daggers, Ophelia's grave, a source of water to splash characters with in benediction or reproach, and an abyss for Hamlet to stare into. One of the hallmarks of Terry's time at the Globe is the Swanamaker becoming a place of inventive design and coups de théâtre, and there's a simple but stunning one here: As the lights go out before Hamlet meets the ghost, all that's left are a few candles suspended over the water; then as the tension ramps up the small chandelier dips into the water, plunging the room into darkness.

Also a bit younger than usual, John Lightbody's Polonius is still a figure of ridicule but also a more threatening and sinister one than the doddering old man we often see; Hamlet may say his murder is accidental, but even after he definitely knows who he's stabbed, he makes sure to finish him off. The show plays fast and loose with the text - "Fuck you, Fortinbras!" doesn't appear on quite as many souvenir keyrings as other famous lines, and instead of the full gravedigger scene, composer/musician Ed Gaughan takes the role to deliver a bizarre standup routine about Mark Labett from The Chase. There's some clever substitutions - speeches from Romeo and Juliet replace the Player's Hecuba speech, which is a good replication of what was originally intended as it's something the audience would easily recognise, just as the original was meant to make the audience think of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. In what feels like a nod to audiences who've seen many productions before and will have seen Rosencrantz (Francesca Henry) and Guildenstern (O'Brien) confused for comic effect, we instead have the characters mix up the same actors when they're playing Cornelius and Voltimand.

After a frantic final Taekwondo duel where Nadi Kemp-Sayfi 's Laertes hides a razor blade in his stick, we get another surprising change of pace for a low-key, ruminative but strangely effective ending. This Hamlet may be hit-and-miss but it's got a lot more hits than misses. The editing, rewriting and rearranging of the text can be brutal (Peter Bourke's Horatio barely seems to appear on stage,) but it does result in an almost cinematic smooth transition between scenes - the action never seems to stop moving. I do sometimes wonder if I'm being a bit patronising in wondering if newcomers to the play would be able to follow the story, but I do know from overheard conversations that the people behind me were having a great time, but barely hanging onto the threads of the plot. But this isn't attempting to be a definitive Hamlet (good, those are always the ones that fail hardest,) it's attempting to go equal parts fun and seriously dark with the most flexible of tragedies, and it manages it with some truly original interpretations along the way. (Also I think we can confirm from this my suspicion from this summer's comedies, that George Foureacres is actually pretty hot but just pretending not to be for comic effect.)

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 9th of April at the Sam Wanamker Playhouse.

Running time: 3 hours 15 minutes including two intervals.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.

*Claudius bypassing Hamlet in the succession is often named as another of his crimes against him; here it's very much the opposite, his publicly putting him up as the next king is absolutely the last thing Hamlet would have wanted