REVIEW: Hamlet (Royal Shakespeare Company)

Luke Thallon as Hamlet and Kel Matsena as Horatio. Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC

Hamlet - ★★★★★ - relentless

RSC: Royal Shakespeare Theatre

What more fitting way to christen a blog of this name than with a review of Hamlet?
 
Rupert Goold’s Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company is a relentless powerhouse of a production, worthy of every cataclysmic metaphor one might throw at it —an avalanche, a freight train, a tornado, a hurricane— and presciently tied to the one from which it takes its concept: a sinking ship. 
 
From its daring design and the acrobatic excellence with which the company handles the stage’s contortions, to the exceptional nuance of each character and the technical synergy that allows the audience to become immersed in its concept, this Hamlet delivers on every front, and is crowned with a shattering RSC debut from Hamlet himself, Luke Thallon.

Luke Thallon as Hamlet. Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC

The Danish city of Elsinore is transformed into the ship Elsinore, upon which the royal family and court are traveling. Hamlet’s uncle Claudius has married his mother, Gertrude, after the death of Hamlet’s namesake, the old king. When the ghost of his father appears to Hamlet to tell him he was murdered by Claudius, the grieving prince must decide what to do with this information and how he will be revenged. 
 
Bound to this single location, and to a timescale inspired by the sinking of the Titanic, the action of the play unfolds in semi-real time; compressed to occur against the backdrop of a disaster whose ending is known.
 
Thallon’s Hamlet is electric, from the moment he appears, sullen and slightly sneering, an unwilling attendant in the stateroom where his uncle-cum-stepfather and mother lounge and engage in a bit of PDA, with some delightful skeeze from Jared Harris as Claudius.  Thallon wretches and expresses his displeasure to the audience with look and gesture, establishing from the outset that he will not speak to us only in soliloquy: he sees us always, and we are his constant, invisible companions to his journey aboard the Elsinore.
 
This Hamlet’s deception is clear, snapping from pseudo-madness to mocking imitation of Polonius (played in a lovingly manic, relatably ADHD manner by Elliot Levey) behind the councillor’s back; making jokes with the audience throughout the play before returning to his pretence; sharp and incisive in his private plot until it becomes clear after the play-within-a-play (the thing to catch the conscience of the king) that the ship is sinking and Hamlet is not trapped aboard Elsinore with Claudius and the court: they are trapped there with him.

 

Elliot Levy as Polonius; Chase Brown as Rosencrantz, Tadeo Martinez as Guildenstern, Jared Harris as Claudius. 

Photos by Marc Brenner © RSC

Es Devlin’s set design is a triumph. A deceptively simple ship’s deck on what looks, at first, to be a fairly steep rake, quickly reveals itself to be much more complex and difficult. Two sets of stairs, upstage and down, allow actors to appear from and disappear belowdecks; a table rises and vanishes through a large trap, and many smaller traps open and close snappily throughout the play, from which performers and props spring with alacrity. Most compelling of all, the initial rake is revealed to be the most gentle position at which the ship appears: as time passes and the sinking progresses, to the alarming flash and chime of a doomsday clock, the rake increases, jumping and receding and jumping again, until it reaches an almost unfathomable pitch.
 
Costume Design by Evie Gurney takes its inspiration from the Titanic as well, as a “jumping off point” to both implant the fatal reference in the audience’s mind, and establish the air of a luxury ocean liner. The costumes are not perfectly set in 1912, but they’re not intended to be: adapted to each character and the actors’ needs in executing this highly physical Hamlet, they do the job without being prescriptive. 
 
At the stroke of midnight on the doomsday clock, frantic ship’s occupants appear in lifebelts instantly recognisable as belonging to Titanic and other ocean liners of the time; at midnight, the game is up; at midnight, Hamlet grapples his ultimate and immortal question, and where his mock of madness and his true internal turmoil may overlap.
 
At midnight, it’s also time for the interval, and the company have set themselves a phenomenal challenge: how to maintain the energy and tension they’ve built up to this point which feels like an unsustainable pinnacle? But they pull it off: where scene changes before have been swift they are now frenzied; perfectly executed, but roiling with the urgency of evacuation. Quiet moments such as Hamlet’s encounter with Claudius at prayer are similarly underlined, allowing volume and physical action to recede without losing a drop of intensity, or ever letting the audience forget that they’re watching a disaster unfold.

Nancy Carroll as Gertrude. Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC

 
Nancy Carroll’s Gertrude is phenomenal, her scene with Hamlet and the accidental death of Polonius a masterclass in viscerality, inner turmoil, and partnership in her work with Thallon. Carroll navigates the complexity of Gertrude with detail and empathy, balancing her love for her son with her perception of his madness, and loyalty to her new husband.
 
Likewise, Jared Harris is a glorious Claudius, his ambition clear throughout, taking a dark turn in his interrogation of Hamlet over Polonius’s whereabouts; his jacket comes off, and his physicality becomes sharply menacing and violent, removing any doubt of what his Claudius might be capable of. 

Also delivering phenomenal RSC debuts are Nia Towle as Ophelia and Lewis Shepherd as Laertes. Towle’s Ophelia is direct and intelligent, devastated by Hamlet’s rejection but taking no nonsense from him in its aftermath. Her incremental breakdown is traceable through Towle’s skilful performance, and her mad scene as unsettling for the audience as it is for those who witness it aboard Elsinore.

Nia Towle as Ophelia and Lewis Shepherd as Laertes. Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC

Shepherd’s Laertes is solid and upright, and also deeply emotional. The family unit of Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes are made convincingly tight-knit and loving by the trio of actors portraying them, and when Laertes discovers the deaths of both his father and sister, Shepherd’s talent is unleashed. Grief, rage, despair, and vengeance are all clearly communicated as Laertes faces his tragedy, and the scene of Claudius’s provocation of Laertes between Shepherd and Harris is a highlight of the show.
 
In the play’s climactic final scene, the company navigate a deck that is constantly moving, again and again defying the expectation of what must be its steepest setting. Hamlet and Laertes’s duel takes place on a stage angled at around forty-five degrees, and is an exemplary piece of fight work from the actors and fight director Kev McCurdy. As vigorous and full of intent as it would have been on level ground —more, with the challenge of pulling it off under these circumstances— the storytelling of the duel is as clear and precise as the technique with which Thallon and Shepherd perform it.

Lewis Shepherd as Laertes and Luke Thallon as Hamlet. Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC
 

Members of the company tumble down the fierce rake of the deck in the play’s final moments, disappearing into the blackness below the ship as it itself plunges into the pit below the stage, reminiscent of both the Titanic and Cirque du Soleil’s KÁ; wailing, writhing humans vanishing with a visible finality unconventional to traditional theatre. 
 
The silhouette of dead Claudius is splayed against a railing at the top of the ship as Laertes succumbs to his own poison and slides away, into the icy night. Clinging to a railing, Horatio cradles a dying Hamlet in his arms, Kel Matsena filling the role and the moment with an aching sincerity, love for his friend, and, in this case, despair not just at all the death he has witnessed, but at his own impending doom. As Hamlet ascends from this life to the next, only Horatio is left to witness his end, alone and despairing, yet still managing to bid, with outstretched and trembling hand, goodnight, sweet prince.

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Hamlet runs through 29 March at the RSC, and will tour 25 Feb through 25 April in 2026. 
For more information and to book tickets, visit the RSC website.