With Billyclub Grumbleduke due to start skull-gazing at the Barbican in a couple of months' time, other London venues haven't been in any hurry to compete, so
Hamlets are thin on the ground this year. One exception comes at the Barbican itself, which precedes the main event with the 80th birthday celebrations of leading Japanese Shakespeare director Yukio Ninagawa. This is a new production, but not the first time
Hamlet's been tackled by Ninagawa - in fact this is his eighth, and the second one to star Tatsuya Fujiwara. The setting this time, in designs by Setsu Asakura and Tsukaka Nakagoshi, is a run-down, poor province in the 19th century, around the time the play was first taken to Japan. Behind the rickety wooden walls, King Claudius (Mikijiro Hira) enjoys the trappings of wealth and power he stole from his brother. The old king's son Hamlet suspects something, but it's only when his father's ghost appears that he finds out Claudius murdered him, and vows to plot revenge. Mainly plot it, not so much do anything about it.
