As Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet wows audiences in the Olivier auditorium, next door in the Cottesloe a terrific bunch of young actors presents a sparky prequel to the main Elsinore action. Prince of Denmark might be presented courtesy of the Shakespeare Schools Festival and performed by the National Youth Theatre but there’s nothing childish about such a top-notch 50 minutes.
A canny scheduler would offer this as a 6pm curtain-raiser to Kinnear every night.
Writer Michael Lesslie has done a fine job of imagining Elsinore 10 years before we customarily see it. The confident faux-Elizabethan lines bounce along in Anthony Banks’s assured production, nodding playfully yet knowledgeably to facts and figures well known from Shakespeare.
The Polonius family, we learn, is newly arrived in court and jittery about its status, which means the ambitious Laertes (Chris Levens, a promising prospect) is intent on bartering the love of Ophelia (a nicely poised Eve Ponsonby) for social standing and his own advancement. The most focused of these brooding teenagers, Laertes isn’t averse to dreaming of the Kingship for himself.
Themes that will be developed more comprehensively later — such as women subject to the whims of politicking men — are skilfully suggested. I could happily have sat through a piece twice this length and so, it transpired, could the school students watching enrapt alongside me.
In rep until October 26. Information:
020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk
Prince Of Denmark
National Theatre: Cottesloe
South Bank, SE1 9PX
