The Birmingham Press

Prince of Denmark: A Cage Fighter on Stage

Hamlet/Royal Shakespeare Theatre: Stratford

Until 28th Sept

 

by Richard Lutz

 

Jonathan Slinger/ credit: Keith Pattison

If you want  this play as Hamlet-lite, all fey, contemplative, metaphysical and slightly wet, this is not  for you.

This is  muscular in- your- face frenetic Hamlet played by Jonathan Slinger, current golden boy of the Stratford RSC troupe.

He has the temperment of a cage fighter, the violence of a cornered animal. If he could, this Hamlet would jump into the front row and bite your nose off.

This is a big play with sweeping ideas and it’s also  Shakespeare’s longest, a play written by a man at the top of his game, using words like no one else.

And with the Hamlet role containing nearly 40 percent of these words, it takes an actor with a  large pair of shoulders and a great deal of ingenuity to take it on- and give it this muscular visceral torque.

Slinger does this: he is an actor with maximum stage power.  There are no gaps, no neutral gear. It’s full on fast forward.

Director David Farr creates a world anchored, not in Jacobean piety and dreams of heaven, but of the muddy dirty earth we shall end up in. In fact, the whole stage is surrounded by a graveyard of sorts littered with remains of skulls. You have no doubt, in this production,  where Shakespeare stood when it came to an afterlife: it is with the worms.

Supporting roles are handled well in this modern dress production: Greg Hicks is commanding as a   step father  who ultimately admits to himself  he is a murderer;  Pippa Nixon is an elfin Ophelia, at first in love with Hamlet and then driven mad by his feigned insanity;  and Robin Soans is that clown of the verbose, Polonius, who gives an impatient son tedious advice that is in essence true, but also, endearingly,  great verbal comedy.

 Tix: 0844 800 1114

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