Review: Hamlet (Minerva, Chichester Festival Theatre)

Review by Stephen Gilchrist

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“That's entertainment!

It might be a fight like you see on the screen

A swain getting slain for the love of a queen

Some great Shakespearean scene

Where a ghost and a prince meet

And everyone ends in mincemeat.”

And, as the great Howard Dietz lyricised, there’s plenty of mincemeat in the Chichester Festival Theatre’s new production of Hamlet, and a thrilling violent finale leading to a stage full of bodies.

This is not Bialystock’s flop musical makeover, ‘Funny Boy’, nor as far as I could tell, a heavily edited or abridged Hamlet. Indeed, at three and a half hours this is the real McCoy and, indeed, 'The Play's The Thing'. And I do not begrudge one minute of this production which is less the ‘Tragedy of Hamlet’ than ‘Hamlet - The Thriller’ and if some of the poetry is lost in the frenetic proceedings then the audience were kept thoroughly entertained.

The play is extraordinarily prescient. We live in a world where adjoining countries are at war or on the brink of war, a world where, in government, moral parameters fade into the fog of corruption, backstabbing (literal and metaphorical), raw ambition overcomes conscience and the desire to extract retribution for a perceived injustice is overwhelmed by a manic drive for vengeance, often violent. This is also the world of Hamlet. 

Claudius (who has married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude) is seen at the beginning of the play to be a capable monarch of Denmark. as he deals diplomatically with such issues as the military threat from Norway. Hamlet’s depression at this late father’s death (his being the former King, and Claudius’s brother) is turned into a lust for revenge as he learns from his father’s spirit that Claudius murdered him. Claudius remorsefully reflects upon his betrayal of his brother and engages spies to monitor Hamlet and then plans to kill him. Insanity and violence reign in the Danish court. There is no escape room save for Hamlet’s friend Horatio.

Perhaps the world was always like this but certainly today the play flags up some contemporary concerns.This production by CFT’s artistic director Justin Audibert is played in a "three quarter round" thrust stage in the Minerva Theatre and works exceptionally well there.

The settings by Lily Arnold places the action of a number of levels. High above on a platform the more intimate scenes are played, and this platform provides an excellent vantage point is for Claudius and Gertrude to view ‘The Mousetrap’, the play Hamlet arranges with the travelling players to reflect his father’s murder, as well as effectively representing the battlements of Elsinore. The designer incorporates a mound of earth upstage which is well used for the gravedigger’s scene (the gravediggers engagingly played by Beatie Edney and Simon Darwen) and to give added emphasis to some of the action and declamatory scenes.

The design is in muted colours, the court in ‘old gold’ is a dark yellow, varying from heavy olive or olive brown to deep or strong yellow. Ryan Day’s lighting provides an eerie gloom to the exteriors. The play seems to be set in a somewhat uncertain Edwardian era with the courtiers attired in what we would identify as English Court Dress in blacks and browns. Hamlet himself is in black throughout.

I said at the beginning of this review that some of the poetry may have been lost, particularly, I felt, from Giles Terera’s Hamlet in his philosophising. In other respects, he gave an excellent reading of the part and was particularly effective in scenes in which he purported madness. It’s a long and tricky part requiring energy and also to be reflective, as Hamlet’s himself points out, of acting being powerful because it's indistinguishable from reality: “The purpose of playing […] is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to Nature”.  Terera’s performance was a job well done.

I enjoyed Sara Powell’s Gertrude, stately, elegant, and I felt that she really had a feel for the text. Likewise, Eve Ponsonby who was superb as fiery red headed Ophelia, flighty at first (even, I thought, channelling Miranda Richardson’s Good Queen Bess in Blackadder!), then tender, romantic and finally maniacally insane. An absolutely first-class performance.

Keir Charles as the unfortunate Polonius, murdered by mistake by Hamlet, was also absolutely ace as the verbose, long-winded and meddling courtier who nevertheless provides his son Laertes with the profound advice "to thine own self be true," and as a comic figure in the play whilst manipulating events, takes the audience amusingly into his confidence.

The intricate text of Hamlet is complex and sometimes difficult to follow for modern audiences. This production, even though somewhat lacking in poetry, made the play comprehensible to all and was not, as sometimes productions are, a bit of a slog to the finish line, and, furthermore, held a mirror up to our world today.

Hamlet plays at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester until October 4th

For tickets and information visit https://www.cft.org.uk/events/hamlet

Photos by Ellie Kurttz