Hamlet with Sir Ian McKellen Running for almost all of August, Ian McKellen will share the role with dancer Johan Christiansen at the new Ashton Hall in St Stephen's Edinburgh…
If you have ever seen Shit Faced Shakespeare where an unknown member of the cast will drink real alcohol while the rest remain sober, you would see a contemporary version of Shakespeare as a comedy designed to make you laugh. In this version of Hamlet at the beautifully recreated Shakespearean theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the idea is to show Hamlet as a psychopathic, woman hating, selfish aristocrat who tells Fortinbras to fuck off and can handle a can of spray paint.
Cush Jumbo's soliloquies are deep and thoughtful, every word heard as they should be. This is the third time I recall the Young Vic choosing an excellent Hamlet but giving him a problematic production. There was Peter Brook's curtailing Adrian Lester's Hamlet to just Hamlet's lines in the play. There was Ian Rickson's setting of Martin Sheen as Hamlet in a psychiatric ward with Gertrude as a fellow patient and Claudius as the consultant psychiatrist. We walked through an installation of the back of a hospital with a dispensary before seeing the play. The last really successful, all round Hamlet I remember at the Young Vic was Paul Rhys's 1930s European royalty in 1999.