David Tennant stars as Hamlet, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

4:00pm Wednesday 6th August 2008

Gregory Doran's productions are always distinguished for visual elegance and narrative clarity. Both virtues are in evidence in Hamlet, his most ambitious and high-profile work to date. The resources of the cavernous Courtyard Theatre are exploited to the full. Surround sound, astonishing light effects and unexpected movement are combined with often surprising, but always audible, delivery of familiar lines and words, all put to the service of large scale dramatic effect. As a theatrical experience it is magnificent. The starry cast all live up their reputations, and there are many fresh 'takes' on familiar lines and speeches, yielding new insights. Earlier placement of "To be, or not to be", and Claudius's physical siezing of huge lamps even as he calls for 'Lights' are just two among many examples.

Yet for me, the parts didn't quite cohere into a whole, and I was left with more questions than ever about this always challenging text. Bold trimming gives us a Fortinbras who is seen, but never speaks; and a Hamlet who is far more "passion's slave" than would-be philosopher. In fact, one wonders quite why the staunchly stoic Horatio (Peter de Jersey) is so fond of his company.

David Tennant's disquieting and often comical cavortings make great theatre, and use the Courtyard's thrust stage to the full. He also speaks beautifully. But we never feel that he is longing to be back at college. Fumbling in trouser pockets for his 'tables', or notebook, he pulls out, instead, a flick-knife with which to inscribe the Ghost's last commandment in blood on his own hand. Had he been one of my own students I would have typified him as "brilliant but not bookish". Nor does he seem to take the slightest interest in politics, despite his clownish donning of a skew-whiff crown.

Patrick Stewart's Claudius, meanwhile, is neither lecherous nor drunken. The court's nightly drinking rituals are signalled by explosive bursts of fireworks, yet the King appears sober throughout. Doran's decision to make Claudius's solitary meditations the pivot of the play, ending the first half and opening the second, is gloriously de-familiarising. But it results, in effect, in the wrong-footing and up-staging of Hamlet, savagely poised to assassinate his genuinely guilt-ridden uncle, and shifts the balance of sympathy quite awkwardly. The play is further re-balanced in the second half.

Oliver Ford Davies's honourable seeming Polonius has to the full that mysterious quality called 'presence', and the play seems the thinner for his loss. Despite his geriatric garrulousness he is really likable, and the outrage felt by both his daughter and his son for their father's violent death seems fully warranted. Mariah Gale's full-throttle mania, as she distributes large branches of waterside foliage to the stunned courtiers, is terrific, with all the stimulating difference in imagery and genre that those scenes require. Less successful was the intermittent use of pistols, especially when Laertes, Western-style, keeps his trained on the coolly dignified Claudius.

The graveyard scene was visually superb, and Mark Hadfield's Gravedigger, perpetually chortling at his own old jokes, was a Dickensian delight. But the final scene seemed to go too fast, leaving us with much confusion and no 'closure', not even the promise of some beyond the text. Yet, come to think of it, that may be an entirely valid way of presenting this always unfathomable play.

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