Is there a hotter ticket in town than David Tennant's Hamlet? I bought good dress circle seats last summer, the minute the RSC box office opened, and have endured a roller coaster of anticipation ever since.
First the anxieties. Would the production be just a TV celebrity vehicle besieged by teenage Whovians? Then the first night. Was Tennant up to the challenge? (Yes, apparently this Hamlet was the real thing.) Next, the news of Tennant's spinal surgery. Would he return? Was Edward Bennett a worthy understudy? Did it matter ? Isn't the RSC an ensemble company equal to such vicissitudes? Then the to-and-fro of Tennant's return. The company issued a press release: mindful of its star's convalescence, it was proceeding on a day-by-day basis. Friends and co-workers reported the latest news: yes, he was back, and better than ever. Charlotte Higgins raved in the Guardian, Nick Curtis in the Standard … The suspense was unbearable. Finally, last night, clutching a £37.50 ticket probably worth £1,000 on the black market, my friends and I filed out of the bitter chill of January London into the Novello. Was it possible to get past the drama of the long wait to the play? Could we just enjoy the show for itself?
First things first. Greg Doran's production has a rare and compelling clarity. It grips from the first line and makes almost complete sense of a notoriously tricky script. From many corrupt and competing folios the director has developed a text that moves (I'd forgotten this) with astonishing speed towards Hamlet's first great speech in act 1, scene 2 ("O that this too too solid flesh …"). The audience was rapt. You could have heard a pin drop. This was theatre at its most bewitching: a great play, a great actor and a great production. Thereafter, the first half was almost flawless and utterly spellbinding. If there were false notes, they came from the cast's occasional mugging to the audience: it's been a long run, and at times that showed. In general though, the RSC, led by Patrick Stewart (Claudius), Penny Downie (Gertrude) and Oliver Ford Davies (Polonius) was superb, and their attention to nice detail impeccable.
One big question with Hamlet is where to have the interval break. After the play-within-a-play scene (act 3, scene 2)? After the death of Polonius in the bedroom scene with Gertrude (act 3, scene 4)? This production – wrongly, in my view – breaks in the middle of Hamlet's discovery of Claudius at prayer ("Now might I do it pat …", act 3, scene 3) and taking a leaf out of Rupert Goold's Macbeth, restarts the second half with a reprise of the same scene.
In the best productions, the final two acts should be a vertiginous descent into murder, mayhem and revenge – the death of Polonius, the madness and death of Ophelia, Hamlet's escape from death in England, the confrontation with Laertes and finally the great onstage fight at court, after which, on a stage strewn with bodies, Fortinbras restores order and sanity. I have to say that this was not achieved here. The second half stumbled, and finally petered out, with the necessary catharsis not fully experienced. The death of Polonius was botched; Ophelia's madness (an impossible role) was not good. The gravedigger scene went on too long. And the bloody climax was disappointing, without energy. You sensed that Tennant was not fully fit for the fight.
Still, for all that, we came out into the nipping and eager air of the Aldwych at about 11 o'clock conscious of having seen the best and most intelligent Hamlet of recent times; if not a rival to Olivier (who, now, can recall that performance anyway?) then quite the equal of Jonathan Pryce's memorable version at the Royal Court in 1980. David Tennant is a superb actor and he was supported by one of the best RSC ensembles in living memory. I think I was lucky to see theatrical history in the making.
