When John Kazek's Claudius first takes his leave of Hamlet, played by Andrew Clark, he gives him a long, lingering kiss on the lips. Fletcher Mathers as Gertrude follows suit in a gesture less of misplaced Oedipal desire than of arrogant sexual control.
Like the way Kazek and Mathers are forever pawing each other, the assault turns the play into the tragedy of an old generation denying the new generation its place. At the very point when Hamlet should be succeeding his dead father, he is paralysed into inaction by Claudius and Gertrude going into extra time, reclaiming their youth and lustily refusing to step down.
The madness and subsequent suicide of Ophelia, played by Samantha Young, is the despairing act of a woman with no future, denied her sexual promise by her elders. The sense of nihilism is emphasised in Jason Southgate's set, a dilapidated wreck of a building above a tar-black sea wall, suggesting even the end-of-the-pier good times are gone.
However, Guy Hollands' well-paced and vibrant staging toys with such ideas without giving them room to take root. Had Kazek played Claudius as a sexually charismatic alpha male, dazzling the court and emasculating the young Hamlet, it would have been consistent both with the anatomically explicit play-within-a-play and with his aggressive kiss. That act, however, seems out of keeping with Kazek's portrayal of the king as a brusque politician sternly securing his power base.
Warmly spoken, engaged and driven, Clark wears the central role rather more lightly than he does his heavy leather coat. Always on the move, he is a man tormented and troubled, but not weighed down by his father's murder. He is an unromantic Hamlet who hesitates for ethical and pragmatic reasons, and not because he is inward- looking or narcissistic.
Sidestepping the problem of how to play Shakespeare's greatest hit, Hollands boldly opens the play with "to be or not to be", shifting the focus to Hamlet's psychology. Clark is two soliloquies in before he meets his father's ghost, whose allegations of foul play merely confirm the young man's instincts, prompting his cry of "oh, my prophetic soul". Centre stage from the start, he is less a character hellbent on revenge than a man trying to claim his rightful place in the world. It means when the play reaches its bloody end, it is not Hamlet we mourn but a whole generation denied its potential.
· Until October 13. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
