Review: HAMLET at the National Theatre

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The king is dead, and his brother Claudius has taken the throne and married the queen. Prince Hamlet’s mourning is interrupted when his father’s ghost appears to him and reveals that he was murdered by his own brother, charging Hamlet with a terrible duty: revenge.

Hamlet is played by Hiran Abeysekera, who previously played a more willing assassin than Hamlet as Gandhi’s murderer in The Father and the Assassin. With a star-studded legacy of acting legends who played the role before him, there must’ve been an implicit pressure to do something different. And he does: Abeysekera portrays the most comedic Hamlet I’ve ever seen. He pulls funny facial expressions, reacts with exaggerated incredulity to the events of the play, and even mocks his own melancholy speeches with self-deprecating self-awareness. His Hamlet is endearing in his awkwardness and humour, giving the relatable sense of someone who copes with his depression through quips. In some places, it falls slightly flat: he delivers the “to be or not to be” soliloquy with a finger gun against his head, as if the audience might misinterpret his meaning.

The production as a whole leans heavily into comedy, with mixed results. Speeches are sliced and moved around for comedic effect - Hamlet begins his “Now I am alone” soliloquy prematurely, before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have exited, earning a funny look from them and an annoyed glare from him. Polonius (Geoffrey Streatfeild), reimagined as more kindly and well-meaning than he is in the text, strums on a guitar as he sings about different theatrical genres and good-naturedly allows his children to mock his oft-repeated speech. Francesca Mills brings us a sassy, sarcastic Ophelia who playfully teases her father and is sharp with Hamlet. But she’s often over-the-top in her acting and exaggerated gesticulations, to the point where she appears more drunk than mad with grief during her final scenes, elicitingly unintended laughter from the audience during what’s meant to be a tragic moment.

But aside from that, the cast plays off each other beautifully, injecting subtle, intimate moments, outside what text suggests, that give a depth to their unique relationships. Gertrude (a marvellous Ayesha Dharker) goes from clinging to Claudius (Alistair Petrie) to recoiling from his touch in the second half of the play. A weeping Hamlet holds Polonius as he dies. Hamlet and Horatio (Tessa Wong) are very physically affectionate, and Horatio comforts him at Ophelia’s grave. It creates a suggestion of a shared history beyond the timeframe of the play, and humanises the characters for us in a way that’s poignant and rich with imaginative detail.

Ben Stones’ set design is visually stunning, with an opulent backdrop covered in Renaissance-style frescos, on a cavernous stage that creates the impression of being inside an enormous castle. Hamlet’s isolation from the rest of Elsinore is emphasised when he stands apart from the glamorously dressed, singing crowds at Gertrude and Claudius’s wedding celebrations, who all freeze mid-word and recede into darkness when he interrupts the flow of the play to address the audience. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting design is cleverly used, with a spotlight signalling the arrival of a ghost or shining on Hamlet whenever he disassociates from those around him.

Throughout the production, Hamlet, who is famous for his soliloquies, has a deeply intimate relationship with the audiences. While he often struggles to make eye contact with characters onstage, he is constantly looking directly at the audience and engaging us in the action, including instructing those in the front row to watch Claudius’s reaction during the play-within-a-play. There’s a heartbreaking moment when he desperately asks us if we can see King Hamlet’s ghost in Gertrude’s quarters (we can’t - making him appear as mad to us as he does to her) and a hilarious one where Polonius addresses us in an aside and Hamlet, defying the laws of theatrical tradition, pulls an incredulous face as if he can hear him. This consistent breaking of the fourth wall, immersing the audience into the world of the play, is the most meaningful and charming part of the production.

So if you’re in two minds about whether to go watch Hamlet in its final week, here’s what you have to look forward to: a superb cast with a lead who puts his own spin on a role that’s been done to death, a visual feast of set and costume designs, some unexpected laughs, and of course, a story about grief, humanity, and mental anguish that feels just as relatable today as it did when it was first written.