“The time is out of joint,” says Hamlet, having discovered the new king has gained power corruptly. “O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!” (Act 1 sc 5)  

This is the 35^th Wellington Summer Shakespeare production* and it’s the first time Hamlet has got the nod. About time! And the timing is spot-on for a female Hamlet** played as a woman. The Time’s Up movement against toxic male dominance is powerfully embodied within the Hamlet-Claudius relationship.

Also, the notion of a nation self-destructing used to feel like the stuff of fable but now we are witness to two major world powers doing just that, so Denmark and Norway can take on a metaphorical resonance. Not that director David O’Donnell has laid a heavy hand of contemporary reference on this production. Rather he has facilitated an articulation of Shakespeare’s best-known play that is verbally and physically crisp, clear and dynamically-paced, allowing us to spot such relevance at will.  

Lucas Neal’s angular grey-panelled set sits in stark contrast to the leafy green setting of The Dell in Wellington’s Botanical Gardens. Jodi Walker’s costume designs are eclectically contemporary but denote no specific time, place … I was going to add ‘or gender’ but the times female characters turn up in trousers seem calculated to comment on gender roles. Hamlet’s “inky black” trousers and shirt contrast with Claudius’s flamboyant mauve silk suit. Gertrude wears long flowing culottes until Ophelia’s death makes her rethink her relationship with Claudius. Ophelia’s short skirt and floral blouse give way to a suit in her ‘mad scenes’ – and, intriguingly, white bras feature both there and in Hamlet’s feigned madness.

There is no moody introspection in Stevie Hancox-Monk’s highly focused and light-on-her-feet Hamlet. Profoundly pissed off at her just-widowed mother’s precipitous marriage to Uncle Claudius, she is totally ‘woke’, articulate and forthright. Confounded by the ghostly visitation that reveals Claudius murdered his brother, her father, the “antic disposition” she assumes, as part of a ruse to prove his guilt, is wickedly wacky.

All her philosophical utterances flow naturally and fluently until the last, which Hancox-Monk plays as a brand new insight: “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all.” (Act 5 sc 2).

Narcissistic entitlement radiates from Mitch Tawhi Thomas’s unnervingly charismatic Claudius. No wonder Maggie Leigh White’s clearly privileged Gertrude is drawn to him, until she isn’t: a nicely modulated shift in awareness. In the many previous Hamlet’s I’ve seen (and been in), Claudius is usually tormented by the realisation there can be no redemption for his rank offence (Act 3 sc 3) but Thomas shrugs it off, playing it up to the audience. As long as he wins what does it matter?

As played by Jenny Nimon, Ophelia is strong and self-assured until Hamlet’s strange behaviour discombobulates her (Act 2 sc 1). While that scene and the “get thee to a nunnery” one (Act 3 sc 1) stand up well to the same-sex pairing, it comes a bit unstuck as she grieves for her mother, mistakenly slain by Hamlet, and bemoans the loss of her virginity in her Valentine’s Day song (Act 4 sc 5)
  Young men will do’t if they come to’t,
  By Cock, they are to blame.
  Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me,
  You promis’d me to wed.”
It would take some cheeky dramaturgy to suggest her antipathy to men relates to Claudius.

Ivana Palezevic delivers a stern, no-nonsense Polonius with a soft spot for her children and even more softness in her head when she believes Hamlet is in love with her daughter. While we’re amused at all this, Palezevic earns our shock and dismay at her untimely demise.

It’s a surprise that Laertes, played by US émigré Daniel Daigle, sports an American accent. I guess Laertes and Ophelia’s parents split up when they were small and the son went to the States with his father. He is strong and to the point, however, presenting as a ‘man of the world’ whose grief at the loss of his mother then sister makes him putty in the hands of Claudius. And he and Hancox-Monk handle the heavy foils with impressive skill (fight director: Simon Manns).

Dylan Hutton embodies the scholarly Horatio with earnest integrity while sisters Elsie and Sally Bollinger (co-creators of The Candle Wasters webseries) are flightily synchronistic as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. These relationships clearly embody the serious and playful extremities of Hamlet’s life at the University of Wittenberg. And Jane Paul’s droll Gravedigger brings us an insight to Hamlet’s early years.

The revenge plot that book-ends Hamlet avenging her father and Laertes avenging his mother and sister, is young Fortinbras avenging the death of his father at the hands of Hamlet’s recently deceased father. Given Claudius’s breezy confidence that the ailing uncle of Fortinbras will prevent the young warrior from his purpose, O’Donnell employs the device of physically manifesting Charlie Jones’ strongly purposed Fortinbras and his soldiers on the march whenever he is mentioned. This works better, I have to say, than the ‘dumb show’ representation of the demise of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  

What does work brilliantly is the manifestation of the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, impressively played by Thomas Barker with half a dozen ‘wraiths’ in attendance. His first entrance is a splendid coup-de-théâtre, as is the way he vanishes.

The 19-strong cast is completed by Harriet Hughes, Andrew Clarke, Maddie Brooks Gillespie, Adam Slocombe, Simon Howard, Kent Edward Norris and Isabella Murray, who all acquit themselves well, mostly in multiple roles. Even more comprise the excellent production crew (find their names here).

It’s fascinating how enjoyable a well-wrought tragedy can be. Astutely edited by David Carnegie to come in under three hours (including interval), this Hamlet marks a high point for Wellington Summer Shakespeare. What’s more, compared with other years, the weather on this opening night is mercifully clear and calm (notwithstanding the odd aeroplane passing overhead, which the actors valiantly try to incorporate with mixed success).

The readiness of the company is clear. The time is ripe to book your tickets.  
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*See review of Wellington Summer Shakespeare 1983-2017

**Women playing Hamlet, usually as men, have included:

• Alice Marriot, “thousands of times”, first recorded in 1859. Her Wikipedia entry adds, “She was not the only woman to play Hamlet. Other ‘Women in Black’ who played the part in the 19th century were Winetta Montague, Clare Howard, Louise Pomeroy, Charlotte Compton, Millicent Bandmann-Palmer, Julia Seaman and Oliph Webb, to name a few.” (Alice was a daughter of James Marriot, who presented the first theatrical performances in Wellington in the saloon of the Ship Hotel in May 1843. Alice stayed in Britain and toured abroad.)  
• Sarah Bernhardt (1899), referenced in O’Donnell’s Director’s Note as “fresh and original. Emphasising the playfulness rather than the melancholy of the role. She was also extremely physical, striding the stage like a panther.”
• The Guardian online pictures eight Female Hamlets from Sarah Bernhardt to Maxine Peake (in 2014) although the first noted is 18th-century actor Charlotte Clarke.
• A 1982 article in the New York Times mentions seven more from 1775 to 1880, by way of previewing a Joseph Papp production starring Diane Venora.
• In 2016 the Wellington-based Lord Lackbeards produced Hamlet with an all-women cast featuring a very pregnant Deborah Eve Rea in the title role.  

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