Stage-to-screen review: Hamlet (Bristol Old Vic / BBC)

It's been a couple of years since I last saw a full production of Hamlet, and with a while yet before the next major one is due (now watch as another gets announced the second after I click Publish,) it seemed as good a time as any to check out the version the BBC offered up recently as part of their First Folio season. This was John Haidar's 2022 production at the Bristol Old Vic, one that had caught my eye for casting real-life husband and wife Finbar Lynch and Niamh Cusack as the king and queen of Denmark. Haidar didn't cast Calam Lynch in the lead to complete the family set, but instead Billy Howle plays Hamlet, the prince of Denmark who's moping quietly at the start of the play after his father's sudden death. Alex Eales' set is slickly black and I want to call Natalie Pryce's costumes modern-dress, except the characters' tech is very Nineties: Hamlet loves soliloquising into his dictaphone, and "The Mousetrap" is interrupted when Polonius' pager goes off.

So we open with Hamlet listening on his Walkman to speeches by and about his uncle Claudius (Lynch,) who's not only succeeded Hamlet's father to the throne but hastily married his mother Gertrude (Cusack) as well. Then the prince is visited by his father's ghost (Firdous Bamji) who gives him a new, murderous purpose in life by revealing he was murdered by Claudius.

I've written Ghost of King Hamlet on my slate because something tells me you're a Traitor

Much like Cush Jumbo's 2021 take on the character, Howle's Hamlet seems to be a topical comment on toxic masculinity, and it comes with much the same pitfalls. Lacking any real direction at the start of the play, the ghost affects Hamlet in the way a misogynistic YouTube conspiracy theorist might affect a disaffected modern teenager: He goes into a permanent self-pitying rage, and while there's a lot of talk about taking it out on the man who's actually wronged him, in practice most of it seems to end up aimed at his mother, Isabel Adomakoh Young's female Horatio, and of course Mirren Mack's frail Ophelia.

This focus on Hamlet's rage and negative qualities and away from his more charming side is, in theory, perfectly valid, but in practice this is a long play where, famously, the lead has half the lines. And if that lead gives us absolutely nothing to root for it makes for a real slog of a watch. It's weird to find yourself cheering on Claudius but Lynch's calm, controlled, meticulously planned evil is a welcome break from (the appropriately-named) Howle's relentless shouting and impotent rage. By the time Howle finally cracks a smile and shows some humanity in the Gravedigger scene, it's too late for us to care about him.

Haidar's text moves things around a bit, not particularly to the show's detriment but there's a couple of odd choices - I'm not sure why you'd even bother including Reynaldo (Catrin Stewart) if you're going to cut the bits where Polonius tells him to spy on and try to entrap his son. And weirdly there's another link to the Young Vic's version, as this mostly-domestic version of the play loses Fortinbras and gives his generic eulogy for Hamlet to Horatio, ostensibly his best friend*. I did, though, like Hamlet's lines at the play being shared around the rest of the cast, because he's about to turn up himself as the Player Murderer.

Which links into one of Hairdar's nicer touches, as I do feel Hamlet tends to get too easy a ride for cornering a troupe of professional actors and lecturing them on How To Do Acting. Here he's reading the lines from a book of acting tips, which Bamji and Stewart's utterly bored Player King and Queen have given him to keep him from bothering them on their fag break, and because he's decided to cast himself in their show so he might as well do it right.

There's also a couple of character elements that aren't explored very often, particularly Jason Barnett's Polonius being less focused on the rambling old duffer and giving us the character's genuine nastiness - his treatment of Ophelia is a mix of patronising and bullying, and I don't remember when I've seen it shown so clearly that, after she follows his instructions to reject Hamlet's advances, he then blames her when he thinks it's driven him mad. And Cusack is as good as you'd hope, really taking Gertrude on a journey from slightly cowering wife, to gaining confidence as she gradually understands that her son's accusations are true.

Haidar also follows Gregory Doran and Simon Godwin in giving us a cliffhanger by putting the interval at the point where Hamlet is considering killing Claudius at prayer, except this time there's also the misdirect of having him shoot him dead, before it being revealed in the second half that this was a fantasy and he's talked himself out of it. Plus, in a cast mostly seeming to use their own accents except when doubling roles, you've got Taheen Modak's Rosencrantz reminding us we're in Bristol. Ultimately I found that Howle's non-stop, shouty fury wore me down so this wasn't a production I could love or even fully enjoy, but that's not to say there aren't interesting elements here as well.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is available to stream in the UK on BBC iPlayer.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

*Fortinbras' speech is essentially "er... looks like I don't have to bother invading Denmark now but hey, I'm sure Hamlet would have put up a good fight before I killed him."