The Cumberdane...

... is a pretty good Hamlet in himself, but the production—!  It's incredibly jumpy and self-indulgent, the text is weirdly cut, and nearly everyone is gabbling as if they haven't a clue what the words mean.  Bah.

The last Hamlet I saw was the David Tennant one, which I thought remarkable for language:  just about everyone in that seemed to be speaking words in his or her own tongue, as if they'd just thought of them.  Here, they're all just shouting Hamlet.

It begins, not on watch, but with Hamlet playing old gramophone records to himself and asking himself "Who's there?"

Horatio is a weedy little homeless hipster with a backpack and a chin beard, and a slight lisp.  Not whom I'd choose to tell my story.

The set is vulgarly huge and overdressed:  the court is seated at an endless, Alice-like table, underneath appalling chandeliers out of one of Tennessee Williams's acid trips, and Gertrude appears to be wearing an albino peacock on her head.  Folks, can we just listen to the play here?

The Ghost?  Unkingly.  Tough little fellow like an Irish sergeant in a torn and muddy uniform, which he strips back to show his tettered latex skin.  More like a Hammer zombie than a Ghost.

And Hamlet does the antic scenes hiding in a toy castle, out of which he crawls in a tin soldier's uniform, surrounded by "amusing" toy counterparts.

The portrait of Claudius is a commemorative plate.

And then they do the whole second half knee deep in mud, inside the palace.  I mean there's mud in Ophelia's piano, sliding off in clumps; the grand staircase is a slump of mud; and as everyone's in black (except Hamlet), you can barely see the fencing match for mud.

I hate this director.

Ah well, at least the gravedigger was cheerful, singing to his graveside radio with a legbone for a mike.

Nine