The New Hamlet is a Man of Action

By Leonard Radic  

Melbourne Age
November, 1979

       Hard on the heels of the MTC’s studio version of “Hamlet” in the Upstairs Athenaeum comes a second production of the play—the Old Vic’s touring production, now at Her Majesty’s with Derek Jacobi in the title role.
      It is an excellent no-nonsense rendering of the play—clear, straightforward and vigorous—which steers a middle course between innovation on the one hand and traditionalism on the other. Director Toby Robertson has neither tampered unduly with the script, nor cluttered the stage with scenery.  A change of lighting and a squirt of mist, and the curtained throne room becomes the bleak and windswept battlement.
      Any production of the play stands or falls, of course, on its Hamlet.  And in Derek Jacobi the Old Vic has found an actor of both stature and distinction. Jacobi’s man-of-action Hamlet is a multi-faceted character.  One minute he is relaxed, tender, high-spirited or loving:  a moment later he dissolves into a sudden flashing rage that leaves Ophelia baffled and Claudius impatient to be rid of him.  Jacobi’s Hamlet is not mopey or melancholic.  There is nothing of Olivier’s man of indecision about him.  In his hands the soliloquies (the most famous of which, “to be or not to be” he delivers to a silent and bemused Ophelia) come across, not as set-piece meditation exercises, but as the agonized outpourings of a confused and injured man, desperate to find a reason for being. What comes through very strongly in Jacobi’s performance is Hamlet’s sense of outrage.  His Prince of Denmark is an intensely Oedipe character, physically drawn towards his mother, jealous of her new-found happiness with his uncle and unable to beat the thought of her enjoying sex with him.
      If the performance lack anything, it is a cold, cutting, sardonic edge.  This is simply not Jacobi’s style. The acting by the other cast members is generally sound, with one distinguished and beautifully etched performance—that of Robert Eddison as Polonius.   All too often he is portrayed as a tiresome and doddering old fool.  Eddison plays the courtier instead as a calm and measured individual, experienced in the ways of the world, and thus protective of his two children to the point of fault.  It is a clear and intelligent reading of the part.
      Julian Glover’s Claudius is firm and authoritative.  However, I could find no trace of sympathy for Brenda Bruce’s prosaic and utterly self-centered and selfish Gertrude.  She bears little or no relation to the pleasure-taking Queen whose portrait Hamlet draws for us. Jane Wymark’s Ophelia has her tender moments; John Rowe is a reliable Horatio; Bernard Brown doubles effectively as the Player King and the chief Gravedigger. The three scenes with the players are nicely organized, adding a touch of color and liveliness to a production which, for all its virtues, falls just a little short of being exciting or memorable.

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