Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Luke Thallon\u2019s Hamlet is all at sea in more ways than one. In Rupert Goold\u2019s scintillating new staging of Shakespeare\u2019s great tragedy, the court of Elsinore has become an Edwardian ocean-going liner heading for stormy waters, aboard it the royal family and the fragile, grief-raddled prince.\u00a0It\u2019s an emblematic choice of setting, purposely redolent of the doomed voyage of the Titanic with its dread metaphors of hubris. If it comes at the cost of some slightly awkward cutting and tailoring of the script, it is worth it for the chance to see the play afresh, delivered with new urgency as a tense psychological thriller. At its centre is Thallon\u2019s exceptional, riveting Hamlet: raw, desperate and desolate. You can\u2019t take your eyes off him for a second.We begin with the catalyst: a prelude in which Hamlet senior is buried, with all due ceremony, at sea \u2014 his body tipped into the fathomless depths below. Cut to 50 days later and we are on that same ship, now become a seaborne coffin for everyone aboard. Es Devlin\u2019s ingenious set presents us with a tilting wooden deck at the prow of the vessel, which pitches and tosses \u2014 alarmingly realistically \u2014 with the waves, while Akhila Krishnan\u2019s atmospheric video design suggests the shifting moods of the ocean ahead. The action is punctuated by sharp orders from nautical whistles and sudden ominous groans and thuds from belly of the vessel.It\u2019s eerie, nightmarish and claustrophobic, and Goold racks up the tension, compressing the drama\u2019s action to a few hours (marked out by digital clocks beside the stage) and instilling a sense of rising panic. Sailors scurry to and fro and, as the seas become choppier, terrified passengers scrabble for life jackets. Everyone is trapped on this rotten ship of state \u2014 none more so than Thallon\u2019s Hamlet, for whom this harrowing expedition is matched by his own internal voyage. More than once you wonder whether this whole drama is in his head as he \u201cdrowns the stage with tears\u201d and plays out scenarios of revenge and redemption.At first he\u2019s alienating, snapping out famous speeches as if they were bubbling through him. That can be jarring and even irritating \u2014 you lose some of the poetry \u2014 but it\u2019s also the point. This Hamlet is not containable \u2014 he\u2019s deeply damaged, unhinged by grief, his bearings lost, tormented by visions of heaven and hell. When he first encounters his father\u2019s ghost (Anton Lesser) in the sweltering boiler room, we are never sure if it is, as his mother puts it, the \u201ccoinage\u201d of his brain, and when he sees the spectre in her cabin, his sobbing, quaking distress is piteous and hard to watch. It\u2019s in her dismay, and that of those who have been close to him, that we glimpse the \u201csweet prince\u201d he once was.Nancy Carroll is superb as Gertrude, gradually unravelling with the storm, as is Nia Towle\u2019s achingly lost Ophelia. Elliot Levey\u2019s subtly pitched Polonius is a man out of his depth \u2014 with his children, with his king, with the increasingly chaotic situation \u2014 and Jared Harris\u2019s Claudius is a smooth brute. Throughout, Goold takes liberties, such as moving Hamlet\u2019s famous soliloquy or cutting Gertrude\u2019s speech about the willow tree. Some things work better than others, some are clumsy or even nonsensical (Laertes setting off \u201cfor France\u201d, for instance). The crucial duel feels rushed and somehow inconsequential. But the end is wildly spectacular, the corrupt tumbling\u00a0to the depths,\u00a0Hamlet\u00a0transfigured, angel-like.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606To March 29, rsc.org.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Luke Thallon\u2019s Hamlet is all at sea in more ways than one. In Rupert Goold\u2019s scintillating new staging of Shakespeare\u2019s great tragedy, the court of Elsinore<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212790,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212788\/revisions\/212790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}