Dr. Who as Hamlet... The appearance of David Tennant in the title role of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet has, unsurprisingly, caused quite a stir. Tennant has worked with the RSC before – so there’s no comparison to be drawn with Daniel Radcliffe’s stint in Equus – but the fame he’s achieved as the latest incarnation of Dr. Who has rather overshadowed his previous career. Certainly the jokes to be heard in Stratford about the Courtyard Theatre being “much bigger on the inside than the outside” would suggest something of the sort.
Screwballs and Soliloquies
Although any punters who went to Hamlet hoping to see Dr. Who will inevitably be disappointed, David Tennant’s familiar jumpy, angular style of acting is certainly in evidence. His interpretation of the Danish prince is a twitchy studentish figure, prone to hugging himself and twisting his limbs into sharp postures. His sudden explosions into movement carry him skittering across the stage, eluding the grasp of the other inhabitants of the court, physically and mentally. The only breaks in coherence come when he is faced with the Big Speeches, such as the soliloquies, or parts of the graveyard scene. At these points, forced to project his voice over the mental hubbub of the audience reciting along in their heads, David Tennant looks and sounds like a good actor reading Shakespeare, not the energetic screwball Hamlet he seems at his best.
A King and Commissar
In fact, given the Who-ha over Tennant’s casting, this is far from being a one-sided production. He is more than balanced by Patrick Stewart, whose Claudius moves from strained geniality to a tense watchfulness as his crime becomes closer to discovery. It’s no criticism of David Tennant to say that at times I actually wished Claudius could get away with it – Patrick Stewart’s performance was so engaging and convincing that it seemed to free the action from its preordained tragic course, and let it function as a plot.
Scenes suddenly seemed to be driven by causes and motives, not the need to get from one set-piece speech to another, and the play emerged as a taut political thriller. (It is tempting to wonder how far Patrick Stewarts conception of the role might have been coloured by his involvement in the TV productions of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor and Smiley’s People. There was certainly more than a whiff of the Soviet spymaster Karla about him.) I have never previously seen Gertrude enter to announce Ophelia’s suicide, and thought “Oh, no. That could completely wreck the operation.”
The Human Cost
Penny Downie’s performance as Gertrude provided a fantastic shading of personal life against this political background. From what is often a fairly reactive role, she produced an intelligent, diplomatic woman who gradually watched her husband and son drag the country into madness and bloodshed. The rapport she developed with Mariah Gale’s Ophelia suggested interesting contrasts between the two women, and the differing extents to which they were implicated in, and damaged by, the court.
