Hamlet, The Young Vic Theatre: review

I have never left a production of Hamlet feeling as irritated and cheated as I was by Ian Rickson’s mindlessly modish staging starring Michael Sheen at the Young Vic.

I have seen duller and worse acted Hamlets, but none in which a director seemed so implacably and egotistically intent on twisting the play to his own dubious ends.

The production, which was interrupted by a 45-minute break just after the start of the performance I saw because of a computer glitch, begins with a promenade round the backstage areas of the theatre to let us know what we are in for. The place has been turned into a secure psychiatric hospital. We are glared at by hatchet-faced medical orderlies who tell us to switch off electronic devices because they could interfere with treatment programmes and pass shelves of bedding and the hospital gymnasium before moving through a cheerless reception centre and into the auditorium. Once we have found our seats, great metal security gates close behind us and Hamlet is discovered hugging his father’s greatcoat over his coffin.

The tiresome tricks don’t end there. In “gender-blind” casting, both Rosencrantz and Hamlet’s best friend Horatio are played by women, and the words of the Ghost are delivered by Hamlet himself, as if he has been possessed by his father’s spirit. I gather this worked brilliantly when Jonathan Pryce did the same thing at the Royal Court 30 years ago, but here it seems like little more than one of Rickson’s tiresome novelties.

The action is set in the late 1960s or early ’70s, and is I suspect strongly influenced by RD Laing’s dotty theory that insanity is probably a sane reaction to the madness of the society in which we live. The problem with this interpretation is that though Hamlet undoubtedly has moments of neuroticism and is evidently suffering from what we would now call clinical depression, most of his madness is an “antic disposition”, and the soliloquies reveal a character of extraordinary wisdom, self-knowledge and mental lucidity.

It is also hard to accept that Claudius (a sinister, purple suited James Clyde) is both the new king of Denmark and chief shrink at the hospital with responsibility for Hamlet’s medical treatment. Many who go to the Young Vic will be seeing this play for the first time. God knows what they will make of a production that seems determined to obfuscate rather than illuminate this demanding drama. Be warned, too, of an infuriating final twist, reminiscent of a primary school pupil’s story ending with the words “And then I woke up and it all was all a dream”.

The pity of all this is that Michael Sheen - with his corkscrew curls and wolfish grins - could be right up there among the great Hamlets.

Though often wild and edgy, this charismatic actor delivers the soliloquies with both clarity and depth of feeling. He also reveals a winning wit, and sudden aching moments of tenderness, especially in the closet scene with his highly sexed mother, Gertrude (excellent Sally Dexter), which begins in Oedipal rage and ends in exhausted tenderness. Needles to say, however, this production denies Hamlet any sense of spiritual illumination at the end, settling instead for passive fatalism.

Vinette Robinson is an affecting Ophelia, especially in her madness, singing songs composed by PJ Harvey to an autoharp accompaniment, but I will draw a veil over several other supporting performances which are embarrassingly inept.

The gimmicks keep on coming to the bitter end, and I find it hard to fathom why Rickson, usually such a fine director, has felt the need to meddle so disastrously with this magnificent and usually indestructible play.