'Hamlet' at Wyndham's Theatre

This afternoon Chris took me to see 'Hamlet' at Wyndham's Theatre, the fourth and final production in the Donmar Warehouse season. Each play in the season had a big name fronting it, firstly, 'Ivanov' with Kevin Brannagh, then 'Twelfth Night' with Derek Jacobi and 'Madame De Sade' with Judi Dench, and finally 'Hamlet' with Jude Law. I've enjoyed each of the plays in different ways and found them frustrating as well. This afternoon's play was no different in that respect.

I saw 'Hamlet' 31 years ago with Derek Jacobi in the lead role. It's definitely a 'leading man' play and is a milestone in anyone's career, which is possibly why Jude Law has taken the title role for this production. I must admit to not really knowing who he is beyond being British and having been in Hollywood films but I had to ask Chris which films he'd been in and decided he's in films I don't see. A lot of the audience clearly knew who he was and were probably only there because of him. I studied 'Hamlet' in depth at university so am very familiar with it as a text but have only seen it once on stage, so I'd been looking forward to this afternoon's performance.

As with all the Donmar productions, I loved the staging and sets, minimal but expressive, and the usual excellent and atmospheric lighting and subtle ambient music. The costumes were all a bit dull and grey but at least Gertrude and Ophelia had a change of colour. Jude Law was, of course, Hamlet, with Penelope Wilton as Gertrude and Kevin R McNally as Claudius, both of whom were excellent. Gertrude doesn't have a big role so this must be a bit of downtime for Penelope who I've seen in a few far more demanding plays in recent years - at least she got to roll around on the floor with Jude, something I'm sure lots of the audience envied her for. And something I thought didn't work at all.

Jude was good as Hamlet, declaiming and phrasing nicely, but I wasn't sure why he had to shout so much, run around and be out of breath (falsely) so often - how much of that was Jude and how much was the director I'll never know, but I found it irritating by the second half - you don't have to run on stage every single time. Kevin R McNally was excellent as Claudius, controlling and totally believable but I did want to hear him say 'ooo arrrr!' in 'Pirates of the Carribean' stylee just once. I was to be disappointed.

I was also disappointed by Ophelia who just seemed a bit, well, wimpish really. Ophelia is, like Gertrude, a rather unsatisfying role since the play is so dominated by men, but, on the other hand, allows so much scope for different characterisations of the role. Unfortunately, we got wimp. O well.

The best scene was the final one - and not because it was the end of the play. The performances were excellent as the main characters died one by one and I admit to my eyes getting a bit moist at that stage. Death and mayhem rule 'Hamlet', nowhere more so than the closing of the play and this was excellently done. The cast deserved its applause at the end although I suspect much of it was for Jude from his fan-base. I enjoyed it and think it would be interesting to see Jude in something less classic - I've no doubt I'll see Penelope in something else in the next year but I still want to hear an 'ooo arrr' from Kevin...