REVIEW:
Hamlet, Prince of Derry
THE hour-long Hamlet could well catch on. Colin Murphy's heavily cut version of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy performed by Stage Beyond on RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday night cut a dash.
Hamlet, Prince of Derry was picked up after the Derry company, whose actors have learning disabilities, had their premiere cancelled by Covid-19. In a way, we benefited and got a taut Elizabethan revenge tragedy, without the need for too much academic brow-furrowing over why the prince delays over killing Claudius.
Oisin Kelly's Hamlet is a genuine star turn, and he's a name to watch. The actor's command of the language, of emotion and action was evident from the beginning when, sounding world weary after his father's death, he says "It's been a long month".
His Oedipal scenes with Gertrude (Bernie Shiels) hit home. And his rollercoaster relationship with Ophelia (Isobel Sharkey, nicely emotional) was superb.
Hamlet's cruelty is underlined by the fact Murphy has set this Hamlet firmly in the digital age. So our protagonist uploads images of his girlfriend as, in the throes of depression, he taunts her.
In a way, the lines that set the tone of this version are Hamlet's later rage against his fate – "The time is out of joint/O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right". So speeches are fragmented, the plot speeds on and the speech about "What a piece of work is man..." becomes a leitmotif delivered ironically, then wonderingly, then triumphantly. This is a broken world and gaming is the obsession, with Laertes and Hamlet facing one another off at the end via an online match.
The whole is moving, and the decision to give Hamlet's most famous soliloquoy, "To be or not to be", to Ophelia is justified as her suicide follows.
Although the effectiveness of this Hamlet, nicely directed by Conall Morrison, depends a bit on your knowledge of the 1599 original, the reworking highlights tragedy and comedy.
The gravediggers' scene worked brilliantly, also Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's double act. But what remains is the piece of work that is Hamlet, reinvented, still vital.
