Hamlet
Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Star casting at Stratford runs the risk of propelling a show into an orbit hard to track or make sense of. Such is inevitably the case with the casting of David Tennant as Hamlet. Director Gregory Doran apparently got the idea from the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? In quest of his bloodline, Tennant was visiting a church in Northern Ireland and casually picked up a skull from an excavation. ‘I saw your audition for Hamlet,’ ran Doran’s text message. Doubtless he’d also not forgotten that the play’s very first line just happens to be ‘Who’s there?’ — and the thing was settled.
In his pre-fame days Tennant had done superlative work with the RSC (as Romeo, Antipholus of Syracuse, and Jack Absolute in The Rivals among other roles), so this wasn’t quite as mad an impulse as it might sound.
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