Hamlet review, The Young Vic

Michael Sheen conveys torment with a stare. There is, of course, quite a lot of torment in Hamlet and it is to his credit that he is utterly electric in the role in the middle of a production with such an incoherent structure you half expect an eight-year-old narrator to come on at the end in fancy dress and say: "And then he woke up and it was all a dream."

Suctioned or sectioned?

Is it all a dream?  Certainly it's madness rather than badness that's the driver in this production. Ian Rickson's modern take has all the action happening in a mental hospital. By the end we have no idea if our hero really is the Prince of Denmark or just a nutter seeing and living a fantasy. Clever doubling with Sheen playing both his dead father and himself, deliberately blurs the lines between delusion and reality; but when the story is about a man who is deliberately blurring the lines between delusion and reality, what we're left with is dust.

That isn't to say that there aren't iconic moments. The play within a play imaginatively features a hoover hose, and there is a unique spin on Shakespeare's ending, but this is a strangely dull few hours. With the exception of the sexily cruel Claudius (James Clyde) in non-U navy suit and brown lace-ups, it is the most visually lacklustre cast in London, kitted in browns and greys and, for poor Ophelia a hideous dusky pink ensemble. The set is bilious: an institution with pea green breeze block walls, a tannoy, a security office with grey filing cabinets and staff in plastic clogs. There is nothing to hold the eye but Sheen.

In conclusion: Whatever Rickson's vision, much of it was lost on the audience. Thankfully, Michael Sheen's highly emotive, physical, confused, confusing and very moving Hamlet keeps us there to the very end.

References:
Michael Billington review in The Guardian