Hamlet’s buoyant reinvention

“So they all died”, said a pleased woman as we left the theatre. “They all fell off the ship.” I, meanwhile, was contemplating an even greater coup de théâtre in Rupert Goold’s breathtakingly ambitious and revelatory — if at times overreaching — new RSC staging of Hamlet. This is, of the dozens of Hamlets that I have seen, the only one in which Hamlet himself does not actually die at the end, but stands, triumphant and resplendent, as he declares “The rest is silence”. Meanwhile, the ship — but very much not the production — sinks around him. 

 Goold, the new artistic director designate of the Old Vic, has always excelled at finding interesting and opportune ways to interpret Shakespeare. Thus he has given us a Soviet Russia-themed Macbeth with Patrick Stewart at Chichester, an Arctic Tempest, again with Stewart, at Stratford and, more recently, a riotous staging at his current home of the Almeida of The Merchant of Venice that relocated the narrative to Las Vegas and thus made that difficult play’s themes of filthy lucre and filthier prejudice all the more comprehensible. 

Yet Goold has perhaps excelled himself with his new interpretation of Hamlet, that sets it on HMS Elsinore, on the night of 14 April 1912; when, of course, the Titanic sank. We know this because this detail is quite literally signposted on stage. For good measure, Goold condenses the onstage action to five hours. We know this, because digital clocks flash up the time, scene by scene, hour by hour and minute by minute. 

Purists will be both outraged and intrigued by many of the risks which Thallon takes with his line readings

It sounds barking mad. Many successful and talented directors have taken a bath — no pun intended — when trying to squeeze Shakespeare into an unusually contrived dramatic straitjacket. Few who have read the play have thought that what it really needed was to be staged at sea with full sturm und drang, in the style of James Cameron’s lachrymose epic Titanic. Here, however, there is no doomed romance at its heart, unless some of the longing glances between Luke Thallon’s Hamlet and Kel Matsena’s Horatio qualify as nautical but nice. Instead, this is a production of weight, intelligence and integrity that does double duty as both a thrilling introduction to the play for virgins or a thoroughly deep dive for Hamlet whores like me, provided of course that you take some of its more outrageous flourishes with a pinch of sea salt. 

The play would not succeed without the previously little-known Thallon’s performance. A previous Goold collaborator, he gives the most idiosyncratic interpretation of the role since Ben Whishaw’s at the Old Vic in 2004. Despite Gertrude’s climatic description of him as “fat and scant of breath”, this Hamlet is possessed of a lean and hungry look as he prowls the stage, daringly interacting with the audience at points. Like the young Whishaw, there is a tangible naivete to his performance that gives his Hamlet both dynamism and, at times, heartbreaking poignancy. Hamlet is a play that deals with the loss of illusion, and there is a visceral charge to the swift unbuttoning of Hamlet’s hopes and clothing alike. 

Those of a certain inclination will be delighted by Thallon’s dashing, at times shirtless demeanour. Purists will be both outraged and intrigued by many of the risks which he takes with his line readings. At times, I was reminded of the younger Bill Nighy, thanks to Thallon’s sometimes eccentric but usually worthwhile decision to stress unexpected or unorthodox words of phrases and to render some of the most famous Shakespearean speeches ever written as fresh as if they had been newly coined. He is helped, or perhaps hindered, by Goold’s decision to cut the text ruthlessly to emphasise pacing and excitement. I can’t remember the last time that I walked out of a Hamlet that was less than three hours long. There are losses to mourn — no Fortinbras, no Osric and Gertrude’s “there is a willow grows aslant a brook” is MIA — but in their stead is a recklessly thrilling momentum that makes this as exciting as any Hollywood blockbuster.

 Thallon is the star attraction — this is an old-school actor’s Hamlet in that regard — but the supporting cast makes an impression amidst the waves. Highlights include Jared Harris’s Claudius, where uncomfortable regality duly shades into ganglord viciousness, Elliot Levey’s amicable, velvet-jacketed Polonius who is in far over his head when it comes to family politics and the great Anton Lesser, pulling double duty as a tormented Ghost who has been dragged from the depths of the sea and a piratical Player King, complete with eyeliner and earring. Goold has recruited top-notch collaborators, not least Adam Cork with his propulsive score and sound design, but the greatest praise must go to Es Devlin’s set design, which conveys the bewilderment and then the terror of a sinking ship. It reaches its peak in the final scene, with dispatched actors flying across the hydraulically tilted set down to Davy Jones’s locker: a moment of hyperbole that sent some of the more irreverent audience members into sniggers. But then it was rescued by a transcendent finale that suited Thallon’s leave-nothing-on-the-table performance beautifully.

 At a time when Shakespeare on stage is often beset by well-meant but misguided attempts to impose modish and anachronistic political concerns onto the text, Goold’s swashbuckling production makes Hamlet fun: not a quality I have previously associated with this greatest of tragedies. It will not be for everyone, but the whooping and cheering at the curtain call felt like a communal moment of catharsis and joy, rather than the usual muted respect, and, in the remarkable Thallon, a star is born. My neighbour may have been delighted by the cast’s watery fates, but this Hamlet stays very much shipshape throughout. 

Hamlet is on at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until 29 March