What a difference a week makes! In Dublin I have just seen a thrilling Hamlet that locates the play in a hi-tech modern Ireland. Now the English Touring Theatre offer us a middle-of-the-road, Jacobean-costumed version that has nothing fresh to say about the play. I have no problem with the period setting; it is the failure to investigate either the human relationships or the political context that troubles me.
The chief drawing card is Ed Stoppard as Hamlet. And Stoppard fils has many things going for him: he is young, darkly handsome and speaks the verse with manifest intelligence. He has the ability to highlight the key word in a line: complaining of Gertrude's capacity "to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets" it is clearly the indecent speed of his mother's remarriage that unnerves him.
Stoppard's chief drawback is his irredeemable sanity; he is hardly the figure whom Ophelia claims to be "blasted with ecstasy". Stoppard's chief concession to an "antic disposition" is to ruffle his hair a bit. In the nunnery scene, his treatment of Ophelia offers no hint of sexual disorder. And, when he stabs Polonius behind the arras, it is with a single stroke that would hardly inflict a mild flesh wound. Stoppard is a personable, sympathetic Hamlet but not the man responsible for five deaths before he kills Claudius.
For the rest, Stephen Unwin has staged the play rather than truly directed it. I've seen more sexual chemistry between TV breakfast show presenters than exists between David Robb's coolly efficient Claudius and Anita Dobson's blandly smiling Gertrude. Michael Cronin gives us Polonius's old-bufferishness without ever suggesting he is either a sinister fixer or the chief cause of Ophelia's madness - a role that Alice Patten invests with little more than sweet charm. The best supporting performances come from Patrick Drury, who authoritatively triples as Ghost, Player King and Priest, and from Ben Warwick, whose Laertes has a speech of fire that fain would blaze. But this is set-text Shakespeare shrouded in decent dullness. When you recall that ETT began 12 years ago with Alan Cumming's capriciously eccentric Hamlet you feel that the company has dwindled into respectability.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 01483 440000. Then touring. World music
