'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

26 January 2026

On Thursday evening we were at the Odeon in Milton Keynes to see the NTLive screening of Hamlet, recorded at the Lyttelton Theatre in London. This National Theatre production, directed by Robert Hastie, stars Hiran Abeysekera as a fast-talking ,mischievous Hamlet who spends much of the performance breaking the fourth wall. It's an entertaining and compelling performance. The production emphasises the humour of the play with Geoffrey Streatfeild's Polonius less a bungling old fool than a court jester performing to the king (complete with ukulele) and Francesca Mills' performance as Ophelia straying close to clowning at times, which makes her descent into madness a bit of a handbrake turn. But Alistair Petrie as Claudius and Ayesha Dharker as Gertrude provide a serious center to the story, both making their characters realistic, believable, and surprisingly sympathetic. And Tessa Wong is moving as a caring and emotional Horatio. The last Hamlet we saw was Rupert Goold's incredible production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford last year, setting the whole play on the deck of a ship (reviewed here in February 2025). This new production was always going to struggle to match that wow moment. But while in Stratford Luke Thallon was a brilliant, restless, twitchy Hamlet, it's Es Devlin's magnificent set that I remember, whereas this Hamlet definitely belongs to Hiran Abeysekera.