Let me set the stage for you, as it were.  The Courtyard Theater is a temporary space, constructed for use while the main RSC theaters go through renovation.  The seats surround the stage on three sides -- the stage juts into the seating, with maybe 15 rows on the floor on all sides and three decks of balconies, for a total of about 1000 seats.  No matter where you sit, you're not far from the stage.  We were in row 6, center -- seats F 14 and 15.  Because the space is temporary, the partitions in the theater, separating the seats from the back wall, were just plywood and scaffolding.  Props were tucked into nooks and crannies back there -- a pair of swords here, a rolled carpet there. 

The rear wall of the stage was entirely made of movable mirrored panels, on center pivots.  They could be rotated to allow for entrances and exits, or lit like scrims to give a misty impression of those standing behind them.  The floor of the stage was glossy black, not mirrored but reflective.  Ramps and steps gave the actors access to the stage from the center front of the stage as well as the two corners, amid the audience. 

As soon as the show began, they started to play with reflections.  The soldiers Francisco and Bernardo stand in a pitch-black theater, lit only by their flashlights.  They light each others faces by pointing their lights down into the "snow" at their feet, giving each face its own spotlight.  When the ghost appears, it's their trembling lights that sketchily illuminate him, and when they try to catch him, two more actors dressed identically to the ghost each catch part of the light, so that even the audience is confused as to where the "real" ghost exited the room. 

They leave, and the bare stage suddenly becomes a palace as chandeliers descend from the ceiling and the mirrored wall swings open to show elegantly-dressed VIPs waving to the flash of paparazzi.  Hamlet will have none of this, stalking across the stage immediately and standing there, his back to the audience while the rest of the group accepts the adulation of the invisible crowd. 

The court enters, all smiles, all political savvy.  Unlike his warlike predecessor (Hamlet’s father), Claudius is a diplomat.  Hamlet is an unmoving, bleak, silent presence in the front corner of the stage as the king sends envoys to Norway, sends Laertes back to school in France.  When all these tasks are done, when no more procrastination is possible, then Claudius turns to Hamlet, trying to forge some relationship with his new resentful stepson.  But no dice.

I’m not going to continue with the play-by-play (unless you ask for it), because I can’t convey the actuality of the thing.  Instead, let me give you the sense of it.  Hamlet’s a play I know from reading and from film.  I’m not sure I’ve actually seen it in production before, just because I’m squeamish about watching people do things obviously out of their league.  (Couldn’t watch American Idol auditions, for instance, if you paid me.)  And so maybe this production isn’t startlingly different, but it was to me.

This Hamlet, played by David Tennant, is a completely non-political creature, surrounded by politicians.  Where other people are making decisions because they’re smart, even because they’re the best thing to do for everyone, Hamlet’s focused on justice and revenge, ready to damn politics and peace and happiness.  (Let’s face it; he’d make a lousy king.)  His version of going mad is almost reversion to his teen years, with the mourning suit of his initial appearance soon replaced by a pair of rumpled Levi’s, bare feet, and a red t-shirt with the outline of pecs and abs upon it.  (It reminded me a bit of Spiderman, frankly, in both the colors and the lines.) 

And while I’m a faithful (new series) Doctor Who watcher, I’m not one to see a TV actor and get googly and gooshy.  I’m vaguely embarrassed by the immediate assumption of RSC workers that we were there just to see Tennant, and the woman in line with the Doctor Who ringtone, and the poster of the Dalek in a fish & chips shop that said “Exterminate your hunger.”  I mean, he’s just this guy – a nice guy, an apparently good actor, but … c’mon.  Even fame-craving I don’t want to be this famous.

But even I must admit that in person, there’s something about him that’s not readily apparent on TV – magnetism, charisma, a way of owning and holding the stage.  While some reviews have tried to dismiss him as a lightweight TV actor, they didn’t see the play I did.  Tennant has serious acting chops.  And he draws the eye.  He’s … intriguing in a way that I didn’t know from TV. 

His nemesis and stepfather, Claudius (played here by Patrick Stewart), is a consummate politician.  You can believe that he killed Hamlet’s father because the end (Denmark at peace) justified those means.  He would probably be a good king (keep the peace, make the trains run on time), if only Hamlet would get with the program.

Those are the big names in this production, the only actors I knew about going in.  But the rest of the cast was excellent.  Polonius stole some scenes, playing the advisor as just maybe a little too old to continue in his role – easily distracted, with a tendency to ramble that his family and colleagues try hard not to be irritated by.  He tells stories they’ve obviously heard before, wastes their time, and stubbornly sticks to his version of events even when he’s patently wrong.  It makes his eventual death more jarring, especially the way Hamlet regards this as not tragic, just a stupid mistake. 

Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, has her own tragedy here, her own arc of disintegration.  Where she starts as the perfect society dame, a relatively minor figure, she starts to fall apart after the intermission – letting us see the real person beneath her hair extensions.  She’s honestly surprised by Hamlet’s accusations, and as she starts to believe him, she starts to fear her new husband just a little bit.  Her world is coming apart, and she seems to linger a few seconds after everyone else in many of the later scenes, silhouetted momentarily against the fading light. 

Ophelia’s gotta be a tough role to play.  She doesn’t get much in the way of meaty text before she goes mad, and yet she has to have the audience’s sympathy, somewhere to go mad from by then.  This Ophelia is a loving, teasing sister and a patient daughter, stuck in a court with no other allies.  When Gertrude first hears that Hamlet might be interested in her, she has to double-check Ophelia’s name.  Without the support of her father, her brother, or her potential lover, Ophelia has nothing to count on.  Her madness points to the falseness of Hamlet’s act.  When she goes mad, Claudius backs away, unnerved. 

Even the minor characters were distinct.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, often indistinguishable, were here defined even through their clothing – they could have been renamed Biff and Skip, all pressed jeans and blazers and carefully worn leather jackets, on the fringes of high society and aware of their tenuous status, far out of their league.  They looked like wanna-be models, all surface and no substance.  The difference between them and Horatio in Hamlet’s life was unmistakable.

Hamlet’s a play that’s almost never performed in its entirety.  If you do, it’s over 4 hours long.  And so almost all productions make cuts.  Even if you don’t make cuts, you have to make choices.  There are multiple versions of it out there, all different drafts of Shakespeare’s pen.  And the idea of intermission is a modern invention, so a modern director has to decide where to put that bathroom break in, rather than being able to rely on the playwright. 

This production made some interesting choices.  The “to be, or not to be” soliloquy falls earlier than I’m used to seeing it, just before Ophelia lays in wait for Hamlet, with Claudius and Polonius watching to see if Hamlet really loves her.  He’s just barely announced his intention to play mad, and here he comes wandering in wearing his grubby clothes, barefooted, depressed and pondering the very depths of existence. 

My favorite choice, the one that had my jaw drop a bit, was the intermission.  Claudius is praying for forgiveness of his fratricide, Hamlet walks past, realizes that he could kill his enemy now, rushes forward, knife in hand – and the stage goes black.  Look, I know the script, I know that he doesn’t kill Claudius at that point, but for a second there, that blackness made me think that he could’ve, made me wonder what if.  It’s a television trick, a break to commercial cliffhanger that I’m not used to seeing in the theater. 

The final battle between Hamlet and Laertes had me sitting forward in my seat, unblinking, not willing to miss a moment of it.  Laertes’ very real-feeling rage over the deaths of his sister and father, the intricacy of Claudius’ plots, the jaded resignation of Gertrude – and into this walks Hamlet, almost a lamb to the slaughter after all his plotting of the earlier scenes.  He thinks his recent fencing practice will be all he needs.  He has no idea that this is the climax of the action, even though everyone in the audience does.

I was stunned by it all, gobsmacked, wanting to rewind it and watch it again.  I wanted to find the director and ask if the Spiderman reference I saw in Hamlet’s costume was intentional, to find out how they did the splintered mirror after Polonius was killed, to ask why Gertrude lingered so in the later scenes.  The program talked about the process of developing this production, the careful studying of the text that the actors went through, and I wanted to be there, to go through it with them in order to taste the production better.