Educational Media Reviews Online

The Royal Exchange Theatre’s live version of Hamlet, directed for the stage by Sarah Frankcom and directed for film by Margaret Williams, features accomplished stage, screen, and television actress Maxine Peake in the title role. The performance is set on a stripped down arena stage, with minimal set pieces and changes between scenes, and the multiple cameras are able to focus on the nuanced performances of the actors. The costuming is contemporary (as is the use of guns and cocaine), though there seems no overall theme to the adaptation; the story is very much the point here, which is the piece’s greatest strength.

Peake’s Hamlet is, perhaps at times, a bit overwrought, but mostly pitch perfect. She is surrounded by an excellent cast with no weak performances throughout. Even at over three hours, the adaptation is streamlined to focus on Hamlet’s arc (the Fortinbras subplot is completely excised, for instance, along with some other non-essential moments that do not lend to the central plot). The doubling of characters is effective, and Hamlet’s being played by a woman has no detrimental effect to the narrative (nor do other clever gender switches)--a testament to the talented performers and to Mr. Shakespeare’s language, in what is still considered by many the greatest play in the Western canon.