It’s been nearly thirty years since Richard III starring Ian McKellen was reimagined from the National Theatre stage into a feature film.
Now, his Hamlet, which ran at the Theatre Royal Windsor in 2021, is coming to DVD and digital platforms.
What’s special about it is that filming took place in the Windsor venue, making the empty theatre into the nooks and crannies of Elsinore.
This Hamlet is abridged and has both age – and gender-blind casting, with a female Ghost (Francesca Annis), Laertes (Emmanuela Cole), and Player King (Frances Barber).
McKellen, now in his ninth decade, is the Prince of Denmark, and the camera captures both his fragility and energy. I still long to see the film of his youthful 1970s Hamlet.
As Polonius, Steven Berkoff (also in his eighties) is rather nastier than many interpretations, a strident military man in control of family and position.
Jonathan Hyde and Jenny Seagrove as Claudius and Gertrude feel more like the Macbeths than the Danish rulers, holding on to the guilt they bear for the murder and betrayal of old King Hamlet.
Seagrove is the only one who opts for a Danish accent, which feels bizarre and misplaced. However, the closet scene is well-judged and performed. Hyde is chilling and duplicitous.
Ophelia (Alis Wyn Davies) morphs from shy girl to protest singer before her watery demise. Ben Allen’s Horatio is Hamlet’s faithful friend.
In filming from everywhere from fire escapes to toilets, theatre boxes to dressing rooms, corridors, and tech booths, this Hamlet is experimental in space as well as tone.
Sometimes, it works. Often, it doesn’t, but it is never less than interesting. In comparison to the stage version, the sense of scale is lost, and some of the humour shared with a live audience is missed.
Sean Mathias brings a tight vision to this play of crisis and chaos. It is by definition a ‘pandemic production’ with its theatre looking abandoned and decayed at the start.
I assume this predates the stage production as both Berkoff and Cole dropped out of that due to rumours of incompatibility and scheduling conflicts.
When I saw the stage production, Barber had moved to the role of Polonius – both interpretations are similar in their power.
Cole’s Laertes is excellent, and I am glad we now have a chance to see her in the role. She is tough and touching in a role that often gets lost in the text.
The soliloquies that give insight into Hamlet’s mind are sometimes delivered almost as aside (“To be or not to be”), and sometimes to camera drawing us in as conspirators (“How all occasions do inform against me”).
And, the “Alas, poor Yorick” sequence is filled with McKellen’s knowledge of his own mortality.
To find out where you can see this version of Hamlet, visit https://hamletincinemas.co.uk/
Hamlet will be available on DVD, Blu-ray & DigitalDownload from 8 Apr.
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Image credit: Strike Media