Hamnet, a play with a plague-driven plot, is the first opening at the Swan since the pandemic closure. Not since Matilda has there been such a female-centred production at the RSC. Rarely has there been a drama that looked so firmly into the 21st century without losing the S in RSC. Or one that, using – hurrah – locally inflected accents, drew directly on Shakespeare’s home town.
This is not the best play ever seen at Stratford – that might after all be Hamlet. Yet though not always fully charged with power, Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel is pivotal. O’Farrell’s absorbing book shows Shakespeare’s imagination infiltrated by family and female life. The most striking literary conclusion is that the playwright was driven to write Hamlet by the death from plague of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet. As important is the notion that the intelligence of his wife, Agnes (not Ann) Hathaway, has been underestimated because not literary, and that her influence was pervasive – not least in the language of flowers and herbs used by the bereft Ophelia.
Erica Whyman’s production and Chakrabarti’s adaptation swing the action still more round Agnes. The set by Tom Piper – most architectural of designers – is dominated by a huge wooden A, the shape made (as in the novel) by the slope of a roof and an attic room. A bewitching soundscape by Xana supplies the sense of an inner life permeated by untamed and spectral noises: birdsong, whispers, the flap of wings, rhythmic tappings that could be the pecking of beaks or knocks from more mysterious sources.
As Agnes, Madeleine Mantock has a commanding serenity, which is savaged by her son’s death. She has impressive support from actors who are, like her, making their RSC debuts: from Harmony Rose-Bremner as the bustling elder sister Susanna, and from Alex Jarrett, hollowed by sorrow without her twin – you watch the blood draining from her face. Ajani Cabey is a fleet, beguiling Hamnet. Wittily billed as “William, Agnes’s husband”, Tom Varey makes Shakespeare a convincing scruff, as eager for rumpy-pumpy among ripening fruit as for stage success.
Judging that the time jumps of the novel would not translate clearly to the stage, Chakrabarti (who after Life of Pi must be considered one of our prime adaptors) has smoothed out the chronology, with uneven results. Hamnet’s appearances are fewer than in the book, which lessens the cataclysmic effect of his disappearance; the early scenes scamper through a long time scheme with some broad-brush (“oily scullion”) characterisation. The riskiest moments provide the finest touches: when Chakrabarti interpolates some Globe rehearsal episodes; when Agnes gives birth, her babies delivered from a shroud-like gown like magic gifts. Shot through with promises, the production can tauten. It is already a sellout success, transferring to the Garrick theatre in London in September.
Illness is still hitting theatres hard: in recent months it has caused the Almeida, the Donmar and the Barbican to postpone openings. Yet the Orange Tree, too underfunded to have understudies, let me in to a performance where an assistant director stepped in at the last moment to read the part of a sick actor. Had they not done so, I would have missed a truly vivid political drama. Riwa Saab read with more than composure: with real commitment. The quick-on-its-feet substitution showed Katie Posner’s production to advantage, demonstrating the power of a tightly bound, gifted young cast.
You Bury Me, set in 2015 but ignited by the events of the 2011 Arab spring, is presented pseudonymously, as written by “Ahlam”. The lack of a single named author is a sign of the solidarity that fuels this drama, making clear to a UK audience – not often reminded of what was at stake during the revolution – just how oppressive was the force against which people rebelled. In the seat next to me, a young Egyptian woman wept.
Each character risks his or her life simply by expressing it. A young gay man is tracked by the authorities because he uses Grindr; his future is dark. His mate puts himself in jeopardy by secret revolutionary writing; young lovers, one Christian, one Muslim, buy an inflatable raft and prepare to leave Cairo: the girl, feeling her future has been blighted by their romance, had thought her only course was never again to touch a penis. They and others swirl, often dancing, around a stage overhung by simple, sometimes menacing stone pillars. No one is a revolutionary figurehead: the peril lies in their attempts to experience and explore – to be a girl with a girlfriend, a bloke with a spliff, someone telling the truth about themselves.
Set a year earlier than Ahlam’s play, Pussycat in Memory of Darkness is a direct account of a desperate history. With a slant. Ukrainian dramatist Neda Nezhdana prompts her audience to look at the terror of now through the lens of then. Her monologue uses elements from the true story of Iryna Dovgan, a beautician who, when the Russians were beginning to destabilise the Donbas region in 2014, suffered betrayal, torture and the loss of her home. It was also inspired by the pains taken by soldiers and civilians to rescue cherished domestic animals; pets, as so often, became a way of recognising the distress of humans.
Polly Creed’s production delivers in a central image. At a roadside, a woman in dark glasses (there is a reason for them) implores passersby to buy the kittens – one black, one grey, one white – she has in a basket: she is told she must produce papers. Kristin Milward’s performance, strongly voiced though with overactive arms, is sometimes at odds with background documentary footage. Still, here is a first-hand account, and a salutary reminder of how long-running this destruction has been. John Farndon, who in collaboration with Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv has translated dozens of Ukrainian plays, is to be thanked. As is the Finborough, one of two small London theatres to be uncovering history this week.
Star ratings (out of five)
Hamnet ★★★
You Bury Me ★★★★
Pussycat in Memory of Darkness ★★★
Hamnet is at the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 17 June; then at the Garrick, London, 30 September to 6 January 2024
You Bury Me is at the Orange Tree theatre, Richmond, until 22 April
Pussycat in Memory of Darkness is at the Finborough theatre, London, until 22 April
