Paradoxically, his Hamlet is quickened back to life only by the Ghost and the overwhelming impression is of a man who, in putting on an “antic disposition”, reveals his true, nervously excitable, mercurial self. And there is a tremendous shock in seeing how the lean, dark-suited figure of the opening scene dissolves into grief the second he is left alone: instead of rattling off “O that this too too sullied flesh would melt”, Tennant gives the impression that the words have to be wrung from his prostrate frame. Tennant’s performance, in short, emerges from a detailed framework. Immediately we sense Claudius’s hostile suspicion towards, and cold contempt for, his moody nephew. And, urging Hamlet not to return to university, Stewart has to be publicly reminded that Wittenberg is the place in question. Patrick Stewart’s superb Claudius insultingly addresses Laertes’s problems before those of Hamlet. And our first glimpse of the chandeliered, mirrored, modern-dress court gives us an instant clue to Hamlet’s alienation. He is a fine Hamlet whose virtues, and occasional vices, are inseparable from the production itself.ĭoran’s production gets off, literally, to a riveting start: the first thing we hear is the sound of hammering and drilling as Denmark’s night-working Niebelungen prepare the country for war.
And Tennant, as anyone familiar with his earlier work with the RSC would expect, has no difficulty in making the transition from the BBC’s Time Lord to a man who could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself a king of infinite space. The big news from Stratford is that Gregory Doran’s production is one of the most richly textured, best-acted versions of the play we have seen in years.
It’s a sign of our star-crazy culture that there has been months of speculation about David Tennant’s Hamlet.
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