Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Changing of the Bard

Plus: Ugly Lies the Bone is a marvellous and often very moving drama at the Lyttelton Theatre

issue 11 March 2017

Hamlet was probably written sometime between 1599 and 1602. The Almeida’s new version opens with a couple of security guards watching surveillance footage taken in a corridor. Well, of course it does. Nothing says ‘late medieval Denmark’ like closed-circuit television. Hamlet (Andrew Scott) appears. His black shirt and matching trousers suggest a snooker pro at the Crucible or a steward on a Virgin train.

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