The show is a co-production between Toneelgroep Amsterdam and the Flemish Toneelhuis (whom Cassiers leads) and Tom Lanoye’s adaptation plays fantastically fast and loose with the play as we know it, toying with our presumptions about what is happening/will happen and introducing a fascinating note of intrigue into a play that is normally so familiar. Combined with the linguistic challenge (this performance, as are several others on Thursdays, was surtitled in English) I loved the level of bamboozlement that came from these changes, the way in which it completely confounded expectations feeling more adventurous than anything we’d ever see at the National.
So we get Abke Haring’s strikingly androgynous Hamlet, her portrayal of the prince’s identity crisis gaining extra currency and depth as more seems to be being called into question, Eelco Smits’ Laërtes and Gaite Jansen’s Ophelia’s sibling connection has an explicitly incestuous bent, Yorick is a character we seem, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a genuine double act, there’ s just huge amounts of invention here that elides into a most cerebral take on Shakespeare’s work. Consequently it sometimes feels a little clinical but it is never less than fascinating.
