Thematic merchandise is common at Shakespeare productions: Veronese pizzas before Romeo and Juliet, meat pies at Titus Andronicus. The new RSC Hamlet, unusually, has a tie-in cruise. The programme advertises a collaboration between the theatre company and Cunard: seven days on the Queen Mary 2 “putting the power of Shakespeare to sea”.
Which is the course on which director Rupert Goold sets the court of Elsinore. His version takes place entirely on a sort of Royal Yacht Scandinavia during what seems to be a honeymoon cruise for Claudius and Gertrude. A ship of state, this is also, metaphorically, a ship of fools.
The budget really pushes the boat out. A roiling wake of waves down-stage (video design: Akhila Krishnan) makes the play seem to be sailing towards us, while a monumental deck (designer: Es Devlin) sometimes violently lurches: in the climactic duels, poisons may not be necessary as sea sickness threatens to do for Hamlet and Laertes.
This bold concept, though, is justified by Hamlet being such a coastal play. Four characters are put to sea (in this version, corpses also get a naval burial) and fear is expressed at the number of “shipwrights” working in Norway to prepare its invasion of Denmark.
Cleverly, the word “bough” in the original is heard, in this context, as “bow.” Elsewhere, Goold and dramaturg Rebecca Latham tinker to render speeches sea-worthy: “chamber” becomes cabin, “earth” is overtaken by “sea”. Ingenuity is required to explain why Yorick’s skull is not in the drink with the rest of him and the biggest loss is Gertrude’s haunting speech about Ophelia’s river death. Here, she just goes over the edge.
Where, it must be acknowledged, many Shakespeare purists will follow her. But, with the RSC economically required to stage the major plays in quick rotation, each iteration should surely be significantly different. Apart from the off-shore setting, bold ideas include the novel suggestion – via a red digital onstage clock, “witching hour” signalled as 00:00 – that the whole play takes place during one long night.
And, unlike in some opera productions, high-concept never cramps performances that would grace any staging. Luke Thallon’s Hamlet, student-cool and with an alternative-comedian vibe, plays against the speeding clock, notably taking his time. Pauses before and during the great soliloquies make the words about death and revenge sound newly thought-out and forced-out rather than learned by schoolchildren for hundreds of years.
Jared Harris’s Claudius exudes the sexual and political ruthlessness of a man willing to kill for a crown and to keep it, and Nancy Carroll, with typical poetic intelligence, captures the growing guilt of having betrayed both son and husband. Elliot Levey’s Polonius is strikingly more dapper diplomat than the standard windbag. The unravelling of Nia Towle’s Ophelia has a clinical reality that adds another layer to debate over whether Hamlet’s descent is pretended. And, whereas every Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or vice versa) are shadowed by the Stoppard spin-off, Chase Brown and Tadeo Martinez find undiscovered country as preppy Americans who must have met Hamlet on a scholarship.
There will be questions about whether Goold should have gone to sea or not to sea but – for its vivid atmosphere and intelligence – this is a must-see. Traditionalists are warned that the RSC will also soon launch a Shakespeare-Radiohead mashup, Hamlet: Hail to the Thief.
• At the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 29 March
