The opening scene suggests that this production will explore the Oedipal territory of mother and son bonds and betrayals. Prince Hamlet sits listening to a recording of his uncle Claudius, who calls Gertrude his “sometime sister”, now queen. Those words snag and repeat while a grainy home video of the infant Hamlet and his mother are projected at the back.
But we are wrongfooted and it quickly turns into something more thrillerish as director John Haidar gives us a modern gothic melodrama with inky backdrops, jagged sound and sudden frenzies of violence.
Alex Eales’s set is an arresting fortress-like structure, revolving to expose slits and staircases. It is a shame the pace of the drama does not match these thrilling optics and the play slightly drags to its end. But there are big emotional pitches along the way and it is a slick idea, elegantly staged.
Billy Howle’s Hamlet is a pale-faced, emo prince who trashes a TV set and totes guns. There are signs of the puritanical incel as he chokes Ophelia and seems like he might rough up his mother, too. Even outside of his assumed “antic disposition” he emanates unhinged anger; in one instance, a fantasy of revenge features Claudius lying dead and looks shockingly as if it might change the course of Shakespeare’s storyline.
Hamlet is building a case against the king, it seems, and he carries a tape recorder to catalogue snippets of conversations or phrases. But the use of this technology and video work as a whole is oddly inconsistent. The videos are seemingly unanchored by a bigger concept, while Hamlet’s recordings are distractingly reminiscent of early era Woody Allen.
The cast give variable performances: Mirren Mack infuses Ophelia’s unravelling with real trauma while Firdous Bamji, doubling up as the player king and gravedigger, has presence. Finbar Lynch, as Claudius, is an accountant-like, understated villain but ends up too much of a cipher. Niamh Cusack’s Gertrude is flirty, flinty and formidable. So good, in fact, that we wish for this production to be the mother-son reckoning that it signals at the start.
Hamlet is at Bristol Old Vic until 12 November and livestreamed on 10 and 11 November.
