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by William Shakespeare, directed by Rupert Goold

Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon Avon, GBR

February 18-March 29, 2025

Hamlet: “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?”

The current RSC production of Hamlet is the most spectacular I have ever seen. Set as it is on the deck of a ship, the production is physically spectacular. Much more important, however, is the play’s acting and direction which bring more of the play’s complexity into view than I have ever experienced in the theatre. Luke Thallon gives a performance as Hamlet that is so fresh and so finely detailed I doubt it will soon be equalled.

What will immediately strike anyone entering the auditorium of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (formerly Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) at Stratford-upon-Avon is Ed Devlin’s set depicting the deck of a ship with stairways fore and aft backed by Akhila Krishnan’s video cyclorama of the sea. Devlin, who seems the master of creating puzzle-box sets, has done so again here. A table arises from the deck and numerous hatches open to supply or stow furniture needed for the various scenes.

While Devlin has created revolving sets before as for the play Machinal or the opera Don Giovanni, here Devlin has designed a mechanism beneath the deck that allows it to pitch 45º from level. Director Rupert Goold uses movement of the deck to underscore disturbing developments in a play filled with disturbing developments. The most exciting of these occurs during the final duel between Hamlet and Laertes when the deck begins to pitch to such an extreme degree that people begin sliding downstage the entire length of the deck and into the depths underneath. The moving deck makes the famous duel the most exciting I’ve ever seen.

Before the action begins the date 14 April 1912 flashes onto the cyclorama. History buffs will know that this is the date that the Titanic struck the iceberg, sinking early the next day 600 km southeast of Newfoundland. In this production the name “Elsinore” refers to the ship that carries all the characters. Whether we are meant to equate the Elsinore with the Titanic is up to us, although Goold has digital readouts on either side of the stage remind us of the time, 2:20 am being the time when the Titanic sank.

The point is that merely positing the Elsinore as an alternate Titanic brings home a point that few productions even suggest. That is that all the characters and Denmark itself are doomed before the play even begins. Those who have read the complete text of Hamlet will know that Hamlet’s father conquered land claimed by the King of Norway, and in revenge the King’s nephew, Fortinbras, a young man of Hamlet’s age, has set out to reconquer them and punish Denmark. Machinations in the Danish court result in the deaths of the King, Queen and heir to the throne among others, so that when Fortinbras arrives in Denmark, the country is his for the taking. Goold includes Claudius’s speech to the Danish emissaries Voltemand and Cornelius (a speech and characters usually cut) which links Claudius’ false belief that he has fended off Norway with his message, to the false belief of the builders of the Titanic that it was unsinkable.

Thus, unlike in any previous production I’ve seen, all the plots and counterplots that Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius consider are meaningless since the world they live in is about to vanish. Hamlet’s famous contemplation of the skull of Yorick is known as an emblem of the motto “Memento mori” (“Remember that you must die”). The Titanic-like ship of the production is itself a gigantic “Memento mori” that nullifies all notions of the importance of human agency. This renders Hamlet’ s soliloquies even more pertinence since they all concern exactly the question of how human actions can have significance in the face of death. What better image of the vanity of human actions than to have two men duel to the death on a sinking ship?

While all previous productions of Hamlet that I’ve seen have decided that Hamlet is not mad, Goold has taken the view, magnificently carried out by Luke Thallon, that Hamlet, having suffered the death of his father, the hasty remarriage of his mother and the usurpation of the throne by his uncle, is indeed very close to madness. Thallon’s Hamlet looks and sounds both crushed and furious at once. Thallon’s line readings are not the elegant expressions of a lively intellect that has found words as its only outlet.

Rather, Thallon has Hamlet pick his way gradually through each speech as if it is hard for him to speak at all and when he does speak that he is very consciously trying to choose exactly the right words. Rather than a mellifluous flow Thallon has Hamlet frequently pause, draw out a word while he is thinking, mouth the next word before settling on it, repeat words or sometimes speak in a rush when a fully formed idea occurs to him. This unusual, disjointed style shows that Hamlet is constantly thinking and constantly weighing everything he says. Good productions usually show that Hamlet’s hyper-self-consciousness is his main impediment to action. This is the first time I have seen this self-consciousness displayed in the very way that Hamlet speaks. The effect makes every line sound brand new and because it feels as if Hamlet is inventing everything he says as he is speaking. It is incredibly exciting to see Thallon play such a well-known role in such a revolutionary but valid way.

We understand that the fragmented speech patterns Thallon uses reflect Hamlet’s mental distress. On top of this, Thallon shows that Hamlet gags rather than speaks about such topics as his father, uncle or mother. Every Hamlet I’ve seen tells his comrades that he will “put an antic disposition on”, yet this is the first time I have seen an actor actually do so. Thallon’s Hamlet, so self-aware as he is, knows he has trouble speaking about his relations. When Thallon’s Hamlet puts on his “antic disposition”, he has Hamlet exaggerate his gagging so that it almost seems he will be sick. Not only that, Thallon has Hamlet imitate a person with Tourette Syndrome so that he shouts out certain words and phrases. Hamlet uses the Tourette tic of involuntary shouting as if to underscore them and make them more noticeable. The effect is truly disturbing and luckily the periodic shouting wears off by the time Hamlet meets the players.

From a directorial point of view, Goold enhances the notion of Hamlet’s madness by de-objectifying the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. It is true that at the start of the performance, Horatio, Francisco and Marcellus think they see the Ghost walking in the mist that has descended on the ship. We see nothing. Goold ensures that the Ghost appears in Old Hamlet’s shape and speaks only to young Hamlet. Goold therefore excises the scene where the voice of Old Hamlet enjoins Hamlet and his friends to swear never to speak of what they’ve seen. In the Closet Scene, Hamlet sees the Ghost of his father in his mother’s mirror where we see nothing. The conclusion has to be that after the mariners’ excited sighting of the Ghost in the midst of mist, Hamlet’s encounter with the embodied speaking Ghost is simply a figment of his imagination. Hamlet’s exclamation on hearing of his murder, “O my prophetic soul!” confirms that Hamlet has already imagined that Claudius killed Old Hamlet.

Thallon is given strong support by an impeccable cast. Jared Harris does not play Claudius as a consciously evil character. Yes, he murdered Old Hamlet but it seems he did so out of love for Gertrude. In his long, uncut soliloquy in the Chapel Scene, Harris reveals that Claudius is wracked with guilt and despairs that it can be forgiven. His cry, “Help, angels! Make assay!” sounds pitiful and anguished.

Miranda Colchester replaced Nancy Carroll as Gertrude at the performance I attended, portraying Hamlet’s mother not as a foolish woman as is often the case but a fragile one who thinks she requires a strong man to protect her. Colchester shows that Hamlet’s forcing her to compare Claudius to Old Hamlet genuinely shatters her, especially when she sees how her actions may have led to his present madness. In order to round out Gertrude’s character, Goold gives her Clarence’s speech from Richard III about his fear of drowning. Colchester delivers this speech as a confession of Gertrude’s own guilt while it also reinforces the maritime imagery and presages the end of nearly all the passengers.

Elliot Levey does not try to make Polonius a comic figure but rather allows the comedy to flow naturally from Polonius’ lines. The comedy of Polonius is that he thinks he is sharp-witted when his own garrulousness demonstrates that he is not.

Nia Towle is not a delicate Ophelia. Instead, Towle shows us a strong young woman who is worn down by a sequence of betrayals and disasters. Thallon delivers Hamlet’s “nunnery” speech to Ophelia not as an insult but as an expression of his despair that love can even exist in the corrupt world he sees. Only when he notes that Claudius and Polonius are spying on him does Hamlet’s speech turn to upbraiding Ophelia as a traitor. After this, Towle’s patterns of speech begin to mimic those of Hamlet as her grip on reality starts to loosen.

Lewis Shepherd is a trusting Laertes, whose anger may be quick to flare up but is also quick to cool down. Kel Matsena is a solid Horatio, who functions primarily as a sounding board for Hamlet. It is a pity Horatio’s speech rationally summing up the play’s action as “purposes mistook / Fall’n on the inventors’ heads” is cut, but then in this version Horatio has no one to speak these lines to.

Anton Lesser is very persuasive as the Ghost and wonderfully eloquent as the First Player, who initially gives Hamlet a fright since (in a kind of self-reflective joke) he looks so much like the Ghost. Goold also has the First Player take on the lines of the First Gravedigger, there being no grave to dig on board. Chase Brown and Tadeo Martinez are very funny as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom Goold gives American accents which make the seem even more naïve than usual.

This current production is now the Hamlet I will measure all others against as is Luke Thallon’s performance as Hamlet. Hamlet ends its run in Stratford-upon-Avon on March 29 but will then go on tour. The more people who see this production the better since Goold and Thallon bring out more nuances and implications in this inexhaustible play than any production or performance I’ve seen before.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Luke Thallon as Hamlet with Kel Matsena as Horatio; scene from Hamlet. Lewis Shepherd as Laertes and Luke Thallon as Hamlet while Jared Harris (seated) as Claudius and Nancy Carroll (standing) as Gertrude look on; Jared Harris as Claudius. © 2025 Marc Brenner.

For tickets visit: www.rsc.org.uk.