Hamlet

This Hamlet is special. It celebrates 30 years of Bell Shakespeare, 30 years since John Bell first stepped onto stage in a tent at the Hordern Pavilion as Hamlet. And it is special because just as each piece of Shakespeare's script fits together with great harmony and tension, so too does every piece of this production. The acting, direction and design of this Hamlet are faultless. Shakespeare must be grinning in his grave.

The play’s core drama begins with Hamlet (Harriet Gordon-Anderson), prince of Denmark, mourning the death of his father King Hamlet (Tony Cogin), and the “o’erhasty” marriage of his mother Gertrude (Lisa McCune) to his uncle Claudius (James Lugton). King Hamlet’s ghost tells Hamlet that he died by Claudius’ hand, and that Hamlet must ”revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”. The arc that follows is one of great tragedy, madness, and death, intimately involving Claudius’ adviser and friend Polonius (Robert Menzies), Hamlet’s love Ophelia (Sophie Wilde), her brother Laertes (Jack Crumlin), and Hamlet’s closest friend and confidante Horatio (James Evans). 

Harriet Gordon-Anderson revives Hamlet with new breath. If Shakespeare is dulled for any who were felt hard-done-by studying it at school, Gordon-Anderson’s rendition will again whet your interest. What a piece of work it is! She is firm and frightening as she beats her chest with vigour, taking on the filial duty of avenging her wronged father. She is truly mad as she titters and makes fun of Polonius. Perhaps most affecting of any moment, she is torn apart as she tells Ophelia she never loved her; kissing her face, unable to really leave her. If (as so many scholars would say) Hamlet gives us the range of human experience, Gordon-Anderson imbues it with a powerful and sensitive soul.

Shaped masterfully by director Peter Evans, every member of the cast deserves the standing ovation that was given on opening night. Menzies turns Polonius’ waffling and rambling and wringing-of-hands into a sympathetic and hilarious art form. Sophie Wilde manages to cut through the bureaucracy of relationships and bare Ophelia’s suffering with vulnerability and strength. 

Designer Anna Tregloan and her team craft a moving tapestry that further enlivens the story. The set’s backdrop is the outside of Elsinore: a white winter sky and tall snow-covered firs. Onto this background is projected video designer Laura Turner’s ‘home videos’ of the characters that remind us - there is a history before this. There was love and life in the castle before the mortal sin of fratricide cracked apart time at its joints. In the centre of the stage is a skeletal structure, the outline of an interior where the castle’s first scene starts. The combined impact of this is to frame the story as occurring in layers of interiority and exteriority that bleed into and out of one another. Tregloan’s costume design sticks in the memory with vibrant style and colour punctuating the stage’s full but harmonious palette. So too, must we recognise James Evans’ artful cutting and shaping of Shakespeare’s text, re-designing, so-to-speak, the play’s matter. 

Bell Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an unmissable experience. It takes the head and the heart of maybe the most famous play ever written and performs it with rarely seen vigour and finesse. Peter Evans, Harriet Gordon-Anderson, and all of the team prove that Hamlet is far more than a dusty article for contemplation; Hamlet is a song of what it is to be human.