Watching bad Shakespeare is a misery from which only an interval can set one free. Thus it was that Sordel & Party streamed eagerly from Wyndham's Theatre and spared themselves further hours of Jude Law's Hamlet.
Hamlet is something of a star vehicle, but here that logic has been taken to an extraordinary degree. Kevin McNally, more than capable of a memorable villain, seemed to be under the misapprehension that Claudius is a bank manager. Penelope Wilton, one of the better actresses of her generation, stood rooted to the spot like a debutante startlet uncertain as to whether she had hit her mark. Neither appeared to have benefited from any actual direction, while lesser-known members of the staff looked like sixth-formers struggling to shine in a below-par school production. In the group scenes lines were spoken withBREATHLESSdeterminationANDrandomemphasis: thrown away in a bid to get back to Law's prince and another interminable soliloquy.
Law himself chose an interesting way to dramatise the dilemma of action and thought. With a pantherish physicality he prowled the stage (frankly at his best when miming a crab or squatting on his haunches), spitting out most of his lines (replete with jarring misreadings) in an effort to get to the next good bit of verse. Once he arrived there, he became ruminative and lifeless, like a teenage Lothario unrolling his poetry to a besotted paramour. Perversely, he was actually the best thing in the production, and on occasion (such as his interrogation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) actually quite good.
But the times when Law was at his best were not the things for which one goes to see Hamlet.
The blame for all this must line with the Michael Grandage, who delivered one of the best Shakespearean productions that I have ever seen with Chiwetel Ejiofor's Othello at the Warehouse yet has seemed all at sea at the Donmar's temporary home. Kenneth Branagh evidently received good notices for Ivanov, but the play was dismal and unconvincing. Judi Dench found herself mired in one of the most celebrated turkeys of the decade in Mishima's Madame de Sade; not a critic had a kind word to say about it. In both cases, however, the comparative unfamiliarity of the material kept Sordel in his seat until the final curtain.
But Shakespeare - especially Hamlet - is so well known to its audience that once you've seen one act you have pretty much seen the entire thing. This isn't team sports: a stern talking-to from a coach at half time is hardly going to teach the cast how to speak poetry.
Inevitably, the weaknesses of the production will raise further questions about the value of productions that have become focused on headline-grabbing casting, yet in this case Denmark was rotten from the top of the bill to the bottom. When not a single actor shines in a production, you can't blame the star.
But you can walk out.
1 comment:
I agree this was not a memorable Hamlet, at best sufficiently workmanlike for me not to feel like walking out. I thought Jude Law's performance too frenetic, ungainly in movement and posture, and repetitive in gesture. And though I think you are a little harsh on Penelope Wilton, I certainly didn't agree with Michael Billington's high praise of her performance. You say that Kevin McNally played Claudius as if he were a bank manager - the drab costumes certainly contributed to that impression: no visual intimation that this was a court. The one thing I did like about the production was that the diction was crystal clear, which is something on which you can no longer rely in the theatre, even in Shakespeare.
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