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HAMLET: NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE

UK, 2026, 180 minutes, Colour.

Hiran Abeysekera, Francesca Mills, Alistair Petrie Geoffrey Streetfeild, Ayesha Dharker, Tessa Wong, Tom Glenister, Hari Mackinnon, Joe Bolland, Ryan Ellsworth, Siobhan Redmond.

Directed by Robert Hastie, Christine.Lalla.

So many performances, on stage, on screen, and for 400 years, so that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is very well known. (And enhanced by the 2025 film version Maggie O’Farrell’s novel and Chloe Zhao’s film, Hamlet.)

This version, using Shakespeare’s whole text, is very much of the 21^st-century, and interesting and entertaining.

There is the issue of the contemporary interpretation, bringing the drama into the current age. But, we remember, after all it in the Globe Theatre, the actors were in the dress of the time and audiences responded accordingly. And, concerning the actors, all roles were played by males – so, in the 21^st-century, why not male and females as characters, and with a cast ethnically and culturally diverse?

As regards the speaking of the text, the stage tradition came on to the screen, especially with the rhetorical dignity and the declaiming of the poetry by Laurence Olivier in 1948. And a continuing tradition. This version appreciates iambic pentameter but interpreted in speech rhythms, everyday speech rhythms, and the variety, serious, comic, offhand, incidental…

And the presence of Hiran Abeysekera as Hamlet. An actor from Sri Lanka, experienced in stage performance in England, especially his award-winning performance in The Life of Pi, Horatio in a version of Hamlet, here he looks to be in his 20s. Olivier was near 40 when he won the Oscar. Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh, in the 1990s, when their mid-30s. So, it is something of a surprise to find that Hiran Abeysekera is in fact 40. But, his performance is as Hamlet in his 20s, at the beginning of life experience, confusion, the death of his father and his shock, his mother’s remarriage, the treacherous uncle, first-time experiences, deepening him.

And, his performance is very contemporary, looking at the camera, looking the audience in the eye, very much in the vein of the stand-up comedian, the audience seeing him close-up, aware of all the nods, winks and nudges, and, especially, the body language, his lackadaisical stances, arms, eyebrows, quick expressions and finding justification for all this in the actual text. , Throughout, especially at the end, maintaining and dignity.

Younger audiences then will be able to identify with this Hamlet. Older audiences assessing him, his inexperience, the challenge to his maturity and growth.

Interesting aspects of the staging, especially the opening scenes on the battlements, dark, the characters using torches, the experience of the ghost. Then a transition to a lavish banquet hall, the chairs for the theatre, the graveyard scene for Alas! Poor Yorick.

The casting, Alistair Petrie a quietly convincing and ultimately ruthless Claudius, Geoffrey Streetfield, courtyard in contemporary clothing, and his babbling. Ayesha Dharker emotional as the Queen, Tessa Young a young female Horatio, the subservient and callow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

But, particularly striking is the presence and performance of Francesca Mills as Ophelia, quite a different interpretation, almost gung ho in various sequences, as if demanding equal time audience attention.

This is National Theatre Live version will certainly pave the way for more contemporary interpretations of Hamlet and Shakespeare’s plays.