A HAMLET THAT STANDS ALONE
“is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice?”
Not monstrous, just consummate acting in a brave, maverick performance as Mark Lockyer reprises his much-admired rendering of the whole of Hamlet in 95 minutes, alone, propless, emotionally invested to an almost frightening degree.
It is not a best-of collection but has the full complex narrative seriousness of the play: I was struck from the start by his willingness to keep a lot of the scene on the battlements which often gets cut about before Hamlet appears: here as elsewhere it gives proper weight to the politics, the Norway/Poland/Denmark sense of war and danger past and future. Many great full-set productions lean so heavily on the emotional-psychological story than its wider context.
Indeed oddly, at the end of this performance I felt I had seen a more complete Hamlet than usual. Lockyer is deft at transforming into each character – his Ophelia girlish, disintegrating into shocked pathos, his Claudius all jokily coercive pomp, his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern weasels of deference. His Player King gives it the full OTT Garrickry. The voice of the Ghost is genuinely unnerving, from some horrid depth. Only once or twice with Laertes might a newcomer briefly hesitate; mostly there is never a doubt when Hamlet himself is before us: wrung out or suddenly enraged, posing his madness orsuddenly doubting his reality.
It is, in short, magnificent. Not one to miss. Few more performances at Wilton’s, then a tour, whose details I will pass on when someone tells me them.
Wiltons.org.uk to 12 April
Produced by regenerationtheatre.co.uk for more details of how to see afterwards
rating 5
theatreCat 