Law’s puckish interpretation of Hamlet is a palpable hit
HAMLET
Wyndhams Theatre
THE second major celebrity to lift Yorrick’s skull this year, Jude Law has more at stake than David Tennant, after too many mediocre films and bad tabloid headlines. Luckily, in making the opening night without slipping a disc he’s already outdone the Timelord – and as it happens, he carries off Hamlet rather well.
Law’s disadvantage on screen can be a lack of gravitas, and there are times when that transfers to the stage too – his wiry frame and weedy voice seem at first to be less than a match to the part’s complexities. But he makes up for this with an energetic performance, handling Hamlet’s intricate fluctuations in mood with great dexterity. Puckish and wily one minute, taught and vengeful the next, there’s a fluidity and intelligence to his acting that’s as unexpected as it is captivating.
He’s helped tremendously by Michael Grandage’s handsome production. The set, of great stone castle walls with two vast doors at the rear, uses scale to emphasise the play’s vertiginous moral questions. Law delivers the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from the back of the stage, shrunken against the wall amidst a beautiful snowfall effect, crushed by the weight of his troubles.
Kevin McNally makes a nicely self-satisfied Claudius, and Penelope Wilton is on fine form as Gertrude, all hand-wringing indecision and weak-willed vanity. A less successful note is struck by Alex Waldman as a rather gauche Laertes, who sucks the drama out of the final scene. It must be said too that, as ever with this play, things lag a bit in the peculiar fourth act. But it’s a very fine production, anchored by Law’s sterling performance.
Timothy Barber
ARCADIA
Duke of York Theatre
First staged in 1993, Tom Stoppard’s play goes on a joyride through chaos theory, romantic poets, landscape gardening, Fermat’s last theorem, the upper classes, adultery, hunting, literary criticism and any number of other themes, tied to the writer’s virtuoso wordplay and wit. It swirls, dazzles and sometimes thrills, but its eventual, conciliatory grasp at emotional resonance comes up short.
Set in the same room of a country pile in both 1809 and the present, it follows two jousting academics as they seek to solve mysteries left behind in notes and letters by a young mathematical genius, her tutor and his friend Lord Byron, once a visitor to the house. They stumble upon naive attempts to solve the problems of the universe, before such problems were known.
The modern cast, led by Neil Pearson and Samantha Bond as the academics, takes a while to warm up, acting honours going to Dan Stevens as the tutor and Nancy Carroll as the mistress of the house. It doesn’t move the heart, but it’s fun to sit back and watch Stoppard show off nonetheless.
TB