The Capulets' masked ball is a socially distanced, visual masterpiece. The music has a heavy beat, maybe heavy metal, and masked figures dance singly and assertively on the scaffolding tiers, all of them flinging off cloaks to reveal clothes that sparkle and shine and shimmer. The dance is more war dance than ballroom.
Set in 1980s Gibraltar, Josie Rourke directs favourites Catherine Tate and David Tennant from the popular BBC television serial Dr Who in an updated version of Much Ado About Nothing.
This is Sir Trevor Nunn's first Hamlet in thirty years and the publicity machine leapt into action to emphasis the youth of his cast, actors who are, or have just been students, playing Hamlet and his contemporaries, also students. It is of course a tremendous risk to take with Shakespeare's greatest tragedy to entrust the huge and demanding role of the Prince of Denmark to Ben Whishaw who is only 23 and barely out of RADA.