Arts / A Hamlet we recoil from

The humour is absurdist, nihilistic, and sometimes makes the audience the butt of its jokes, with wild non-sequiturs puncturing any serious or dignified moments.

More than once I thought: “This must be how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern felt”. Wilson gives a convincing modernisation of what it would have felt like to deal with mad Hamlet’s abuse and pranks.

But unlike the wily Hamlet of Shakespeare’s original, this Hamlet is just dumb. At first I wondered whether there would be hints that this fooling was just a pose, but the joke here is only that Hamlet (and Shakespeare’s play) are both a bit stupid.

If this Hamlet has really just come back from university, we sense he spent most of his time there getting drunk and lighting his farts on fire.

However Wilson is an energetic performer and, at moments, was able to genuinely connect with the audience, usually so he could deliberately distance us. Quite intentionally, this is a Hamlet we recoil from, rather than one we relate to.

The absurdity and creativity of the show will find an audience, but there is better parody to be found in Shakespeare’s wry and self-aware original.