Peter Brook directs Adrian Lester in an essential Hamlet Forget Shakespeare. Forget that there ever was such a man. Forget that these plays had an author. . . So just…
David Lan's atmospheric production is bounded by one room in the apartment block in Chicago. The beginning of the play sees the family lining up to use the communal bathroom and we get a sense of the tension created by cramped quarters and the enforced intimacy with the neighbours.
Bill Nighy plays Robert Smith, the sardonic consultant psychiatrist who makes the case that all psychometric testing has a cultural bias, an ethnocentricity which contributes to the misdiagnosis of those from other cultures. Bruce (Andrew Lincoln) is in his first year of practice and feels that Christopher may have schizophrenia.