A remarkably cheery outing for the Gloomy Dane, one that teeters on the brink of turning tragedy into comedy.  The production celebrates the makeshift, temporary physicality and close comradeship of the theatre company on tour, riffing outwards from the wandering players in the play, with actors doubling and trebling roles, and a set reminiscent of a very sturdy garden shed, hung about with handy tools. There is of course much comedy in Hamlet anyway and this production gleefully makes it prominent, steering away from the tortured angst of Hamlet obsessing about his mother’s sex life, and giving a refreshing interpretation of a young man who wants life, is aggressive, even cocky, but is reluctantly dragged into the maelstrom of death.  Michael Benz, his halo of angelic blond hair shining in the evening sun, is a very young Hamlet .  The company gives an essay in the programme on the historic precedents for performing a seriously cut text (you’ll get no complaint from me about that) and one of the things they cut, interestingly, is the bit in the gravedigger scene where you can work out Hamlet’s age to be somewhere around 28.  This Hamlet plays more like 20 (the age a student should be) and his indecision and inconsistency plays very convincingly as the desperate measures of an immature person on whom a cruel burden has been bound, until the stubbornness and steel in him comes through.  It is actually a much more sympathetic portrayal than the varyingly unhinged and self-obsessed manifestations of more mature Hamlets. 

Having the same actor (the excellent Dickon Tyrrell) play Old Hamlet and Claudius also makes real for us something I hadn’t emotionally understood before – Hamlet’s insistence on the difference between his father and Claudius (especially in the famous bedroom scene with his mother) is actually him protesting too much.  One of the reasons it’s hard for him to kill his uncle is that he does look like his father and it would be like killing his father.  Those supporting actors are awesomely wonderful - special mention for Miranda Foster as Gertrude/ the player Queen, and Carlyss Peer as a very modern and feisty Ophelia, but everyone is excellent in the perfectly choreographed ensemble.  The performances are very physical, with exhilarating sequences of mime, dance, and of course, fighting, expertly and excitingly presented.  Much music too has been added, very successfully and pleasurably.  Altogether this is pretty damn wonderful, and if you can contrive to get tickets for a night when it isn’t raining, you definitely should go.