Peter Brook's thoughtful adaptation of the play featuring Shakespeare's procrastinating prince may leave you in two minds.
It was clear from last night's open dress rehearsal that the production which opened in December last year in Paris is an attempt to re-encounter the drama without the trappings and preconceptions the play is heir to. To this end, Brook has reorganised the text and pared it down to concentrate on Hamlet's personal transformation.
On the one hand, this creates a unique intensity of focus on Adrian Lester's performance as the avenging Dane. On the other, it is at the expense of the play's social and political context.
Elsinore castle is turned into something like a Bedouin tent furnished by Heal's with Persian rugs and cushions. What classicism is retained derives largely from Toshi Tsuchitori's plan-gent music, played on oriental instruments, which creates the eery formality of Japanese Noh drama.
There is also an attempt to universalise the action through ethnically integrated casting. But the production remains a single perspective meditation not on global themes but on the nature of acting - both on a stage and
The dreadlocked Adrian Lester pursues his part like a train of thought occurring to him for the first time - not for the umpteenth time at the end of the company's exhausting world tour. He seems to be grasping at the shadows of unarticulated thoughts and impulses which slip from him as puns and figures of speech.
But the really remarkable thing is the way that Lester maintains a steadfast sense of direction within his character's in-directions. Sometimes his hand gestures explain his allusions unnecessarily, but beneath his elaborating manners, there is an emotional simplicity heeding his own advice to Horatio to "let be".
The flip side of Brook's production is to turn the other characters into ciphers waiting on the protagoin real life. nist. This is particularly true of the play's two women, so that Natasha Parry and Shantala Shivalingappa have precious little to go on as Gertrude and Ophelia.
By contrast, Horatio becomes a much bigger presence and in this role Scott Handy is a rock around which Lester can orbit. Jeffery Kissoon is a brooding Buddha of a Claudius, a seemingly inviolable enigma for Hamlet to crack. Meanwhile, Bruce Myers's Polonius is a regular busybody fascinated by and fearful of Hamlet's "antic disposition".
For all the ambivalence which Brook's production creates, Lester's performance does describe a strong and moving journey towards personal enlightenment.
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