Andrew Scott's Hamlet (Almeida)

Saw this tonight. A muted, poetic, poignant, intimate rumination on life and, particularly, death, this is among the best Hamlets I have seen!

Spoilers follow. . .

The production poster of Andrew Scott's Hamlet, open-eyed in an open coffin, blue satin sheets reflecting blue across his face, as red flowers and flames emblazon the black jumper covering his chest, perfectly captures the mood of this production.

Scott's Hamlet rages red internally, but all his actions are tempered by a calm blue thoughtfulness, that is rooted deeply into the production as a whole.

Icke magnifies the contemplative and poetic power of this production by using all characters periodically as sentinels, silently observing the actions of other characters, which technique gives multiple meanings to many scenes, as we perceive them through the eyes of all the carefully positioned watchers. Characters who are not in a scene, on the page, nonetheless appear in scenes serving their function as sentinels, hugely enriching an audience experience, where we too are observing silently, and see ourselves reflected.

Such reflections occasionally become literal, as when audience members are caught on camera, and displayed on a big screen. Unlike other Icke productions, where surveillance has been a threatening presence, here surveillance serves as the ultimate sentinel, a transmitter and recorder of truth, including closeups and freeze frames of faces of the actors.

The intimacy of the Almeida is paramount. Actors can speak in a whisper and still be heard, so the rise and fall of emotions can be more sensitively calibrated than in bigger theatres, such as the Barbican barn of Benedict Cumberbatch or even the Cambridge Theatre cave of David Tennant.

Indeed, Tennant's astonishing and excellent stint as Hamlet can be most usefully compared with this production, as he is an actor with a similar electric wired range to Scott. Tennant gave us "antic disposition" that was so electric and so wired that Scott could easily have seen it as his duty to try to outdo Tennant in total manic energy output. This could have been disastrous in a tiny space like the Almeida, where such an effort would come across as shrill and off-putting overacting. But instead, Scott does the opposite: conforming to Icke's hushed, delicate and caring vision by muting his performance, treading sensitively and lightly through Shakespeare's poetry as if ballet-dancing on pins, where pins are words, and every one can Pr**k.

This is a magnificent cast across the board. Angus Wright once again gives us his oh-so-real matter-of-fact delivery, that makes Claudius' malevolence commonplace, universal and inevitable. Juliet Stevenson gives us the most touchy-feely of Gertrudes, at once motherly and loving but equally desperate and needy. So too with Peter Wight's Polonius, at once a buffoon as well as a loveable warm and tender father. Jessica Brown Findlay's Ophelia is infinitely touching not only because the actress exquisitely expresses Ophelia's hurt, but also because Icke finds ingenious ways of enriching her early scenes such that her initial bond with Hamlet is greater and richer than we are used to.


All the characters are like this, multifaceted and well-rounded, without a hint of exaggeration. All the characters' arcs are poetically linked in Icke's well-orchestrated, plaintive dance of death.

It is Andrew Scott who holds the poetry together, Icke's ultrasensitive onstage avatar. Sometimes he seems to move in slow motion, sometimes he explodes, but the sensitivity and depth of Icke's vision always remains intact, right up to it's supremely moving ending.

I'm only glad I've another ticket to see this production after it beds in, and before it moves somewhere where it's incredible intimacy will be lost. This is a Hamlet for the ages. For me, anyway.

5 stars.