Productions of Hamlet these days "come not single spies but in battalions". However, whatever reservations I have about Toby Stephens' Prince, Michael Boyd's RSC production not only transfers easily from Stratford but has the rare capacity to make one respond to a familiar text as if hearing it for the first time.
Two ideas, increasingly intertwined, thread their way through Boyd's production: that the Catholic Ghost totally unnerves an essentially Protestant Hamlet and that Claudius's Elsinore is an incipient autocracy. Greg Hicks's crouching, red-eyed, Ghost clearly emanates from purgatory and, by driving Hamlet into a questioning frenzy, sends shock waves through the entire court.
Hicks's reappearance as Player King and Gravedigger, which at Stratford seemed a testament to his virtuosity, also pays remarkable dividends. At Ophelia's graveside Sian Thomas's wonderfully troubled Gertrude looks at Hicks's blanched sexton with a shock of recognition.
Boyd's production is packed with that kind of illuminating detail. Richard Cordery's excellent Polonius is both a practised politician, busily ingratiating himself with the new regime, and a bullying patriarch whose brutally insensitive treatment of Meg Fraser's submissive Ophelia drives her to madness.
Clive Wood's Claudius, who sees Hamlet as a permanent dynastic threat, not only smiles dangerously but even makes a line such as "good Horatio" sound intimidating. And, at the climax, it struck me that Gertrude knowingly drinks the poisoned cup in a vain attempt to save her son's life.
Only about Stephens' Hamlet do I feel equivocal. His speaking of the soliloquies has improved immeasurably since Stratford. With his insulting mockery and exposed limbs plastered with the Ghost's injunctions, he also shows why Hamlet poses a threat to Claudius.
But, although Stephens conveys Hamlet's frenzied wildness, he frequently acts on top of, rather than through, the lines and misses the character's analytic power. A classic case occurs in the closet scene where his tactical switch in urging Gertrude to refrain from sex goes totally unremarked.
Even if I yearned for more sign of Hamlet's intellectual capacity, this has grown into a genuinely thrilling production: one that ends with an echo of the Ghost's stage-scraping sword reminding us that, while revenge has been messily accomplished, old Hamlet's soul remains unshriven.
·Until December 11. Box office: 0870 060 6621.
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