HAMLET (Bristol Old Vic)*****

 

By Megan

Link: https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/hamlet-on-demand

Available until: 29^th November 2022 (48 hour rental)

Content warning: Violence, blood, vomit, death, suicide, live gunshots, strobe lighting

Age rating: 14+ (I'm only 12. I've seen Hamlet lots of times so we forgot to check the age rating because it's not a new play. It's not as violent as some of the films I've watched at sleepovers but Hamlet probably isn't a good choice for your first ever Shakespeare play)

 

I haven’t written a review for a very long time. I hope I haven’t forgotten how because this is a really good production which deserves the best possible review I can write. But I am out of practice and I am still only twelve so there might be things I get wrong and things I don’t understand.

Director John Haidar has lots of good ideas which are clever, different and interesting but they always enhance the brilliant story. Alex Eales’ minimalist set has a dark and creepy feel to it, especially with Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting, which is just enough for you to be able to see the actors well but dark enough to give you the sense that something is… well, rotten.

The actors are in Shakespeare in 21^st century costumes and usually when that happens and it works, I am usually thinking all the way through how well the update is working. In this production with Natalie Pryce’s costumes, I was so invested in the play and the performances, I mostly forgot it was modern. The play just feels so real and I was so involved in it, they stopped being costumes in a play. They were just the characters’ clothes.

There is a lot of violence in this play. You can’t really do Hamlet without it and this is quite graphic for a stage play with lots of blood. But it is all really clever. There is a lot of detail in the fights (the fight director was Bret Yount) and in the deaths but it is never overdone and it doesn’t go into comedy. The deaths are very powerful and most of them are very sad.

One thing I really loved about this production is how easy it was to understand. Shakespeare can sound very difficult and confusing and it is very possible to be watching a production and feel a bit lost even if you have seen it before and even if you’re a grown-up. But this production feels so natural and it was like I didn’t have to stretch my brain too much to understand it because the actors did it all for me. This is partly why I was so invested in this production, even more than usual. The way it was performed meant I could just watch and listen and feel and I didn’t have to kind of translate it in my head. Analysing Shakespeare can be very interesting and fun and satisfying and you can find all kinds of possible hidden meanings but it is also really nice to watch it and see the actors’ meanings really clearly.

The actors are really amazing. They fill the words with meaning and emotion, the characters are brought across really strongly and you see all of them changing as they go through the story and the terrible events unfold in front of them.

Billy Howle is one of the best young adult actors I have seen. His talent was even very obvious in the TV adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution when they completely changed his character’s personality and changed all the things I really love about the play which was sad. So I thought he would be a really good Hamlet and he is brilliant. Hamlet’s mental illness is really convincingly presented. It is frightening and disturbing at times. His emotions are powerful and believable. But even when Hamlet is killing people, there is something so vulnerable and touching about him. He seems so lost and although I obviously know Hamlet is probably the greatest tragedy ever written, I was always very aware of the tragedy whenever Mr Howle was onstage. Hamlet is grieving and confused and lost and he was right all along but it destroys him and I felt so sad watching him.

Mirren Mack is also brilliant as Ophelia. Ophelia also has mental health problems and the development of them was really convincing and also tragic but it was a different kind of tragedy because she doesn’t play any role in causing it or make things worse for herself like Hamlet does. She is like a completely innocent victim and she is really lovely. I really like her Scottish accent too, it is very musical and it works well with the music in Shakespeare’s words.

These two quite young actors weren’t just taking on two very challenging roles. They had to share the stage with someone as talented as Niamh Cusack who was playing Gertrude. I don’t really like the situation with Gertrude’s second marriage, Hamlet is right, it was much too quick but Ms Cusack makes her into such a lovely character and the kindness she shows to Ophelia especially really made me like her a lot. I also love the way Ms Cusack is always reacting to everything that happens onstage. Sometimes it is really subtle so she doesn’t take any attention away from the main drama but Gertrude’s reactions always feel so right and so in character and they make her scenes even more brilliant.

There are lots of ways of playing Claudius but I really liked Finbar Lynch’s creepy performance. He’s scary but he has so much power it actually makes total sense that Gertrude would end up marrying him. Taheen Modak plays Laertes and Rosencrantz. They are very different but they are both very sweet and he really makes you care about both of them.

Like almost every production with gender blind casting, Rosencrantz is a man and Guildenstern is a woman. I wonder if that’s because Hamlet gets a bit more vicious with Guildenstern than with Rosencrantz and it looks more dramatic if a man is verbally attacking a woman. Catrin Finch is really good and I like the way Guildenstern starts off confident but then she changes in response to what happens. It is also really interesting that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem like less of a duo in this production and more two people who happen to be in the same place, doing the same job.

Isabel Adomakoh Young (Horatio) is an actor I saw a lot in lockdown, often in male roles, and she is really talented. She can bring so much to the smaller roles but at the end when Horatio has a lot to do on his own, she can easily hold the stage and keep the intensity going, even when the leading actors are so brilliant. Firdous Bamji is very funny as the Gravedigger and Jason Barnett has a really strong presence as Polonius. It was also really good to see the different ethnicities in the cast and the female actors playing male roles.

This is a really brilliant production of Hamlet and if you didn’t see it live (or even if you did) I recommend this on-demand version.