Lore Of The Excluded Centre

People have a tendency to put cast their ultimata by using that very useful small word: or. "Back me or sack me." "Put up or shut up." "Go big or go home." But The Labour Party currently has got itself into a position where ors no longer seem to count for anything.

Things began badly when the Parliamentary Labour Party discovered that it wouldn't back Jeremy Corbyn and couldn't sack him either. Let's be clear: if Corbyn was on fire and the greater proportion of his MPs had uncomfortably full bladders then they would burst before they assuaged the least part of his discomfort. Backing Corbyn was out of the question, but the manoeuvres to remove him backfired almost beyond belief. Corbyn now has a tame Shadow Cabinet and a renewed mandate; his opponents have given up their cabinet positions (with such dubious eminence as these conferred upon them) and been forced to slink to the back benches where - due to the paucity of MPs willing to sit any closer to their leader than absolutely necessary - they are presumably packed like a small wardrobe towards the end of a particularly populous game of Sardines.

Next, they decided that they wouldn't shut up, but weren't going to put up either. None of Corbyn's most vocal detractors actually stood against him in the leadership election with the consequence that the job of running against him fell to a man more anonymous than his surname; a man, in fact, whose only discernible political achievement had been to trip the hapless Angela Eagle as she stretched out for the prize. The Labour Big Beasts hung back, hoping to dine on another's kill, and all that is left for them now is dispute the pickings of Owen Smith's lean & hungry carcass.

Now it is left for them to go big or go home. But going big is going to be difficult: a vote of No Confidence is difficult to top, and the near unanimity with which the Parliamentary Labour Party attempted to remove Corbyn looks considerably more fragile today.

And, given the difficult conversations that they face with their constituency party members, Labour MPs can't go home.

So it comes down to that most famous of literary disjunctions: "To be or not to be." True, collective self-destruction seems to be option for which Labour MPs have boundless appetite, but this seems to be a case where even making their quietus with a bare bodkin can hardly spare them a proud man's contumely.

On The Whole, Not To Be

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.