To cut, or not to cut - that is the question that dogs every director who addresses the turbulent inner world of Denmark's most famous prince. In 1922, TS Eliot declared, "Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary," so maybe he would have approved of this fragmented, elliptical piece, which destroys the architecture of the text at the same time as it reveals some of the architectural secrets of the Battersea Arts Centre.
Traipsing up stairs, peering into small rooms, and spying on remote figures through windows are just some of the experiences awaiting those who want to explore the enigmas of Who Goes There? For the first half of the evening, the audience members are invited on a tour of this sprawlingly beautiful Victorian building, replete with glass cupola and mosaic floor, so that they can catch the whispers of Polonius in his study, eavesdrop on Claudius, or peer into a room where Ophelia wallows in virginal melancholy.
Directors Tristan Sharps and Henk Schut have completely redesigned the piece for each venue that they have toured to, and occasionally the early scenes in the production - which are set up like modern art installations - fail to supply enough clues to ignite the sceptic's imagination. Yet it is well worth persevering with this radical version of Hamlet for sudden moments of text-illuminating beauty, whether it is Schut's poetry-charged film of Claudius poisoning Hamlet's father, or the moment when a funeral procession passes solemnly behind the arches at the bottom of the BAC's main staircase.
This is the ultimate post-modern Hamlet - epitomised in the instant when Hamlet himself throws around handfuls of the play's text while shouting: "Words, words, words." Endearingly accessible, quirkily provocative, and jaggedly alluring, it disorientates onlookers so that they can find new and disturbing routes through Shakespeare's excitingly flawed original.
Who Goes Bare?
