In an extraordinary week, three of Britain’s most authoritative male directors make Shakespeare quake and reverberate.
Rupert Goold commands the Stratford stage with a maritime Hamlet. A broiling sea. A tilting deck down which bodies slide on a fast chute to hell. Swirling darkness and glaring, blue-tinged light. A mesmeric prince in Luke Thallon.
Goold has set the action in 1912, compressed the timescale and made Elsinore not a castle but a boat. Illuminated by Jack Knowles, Es Devlin’s magnificent design sets the action under a wooden ceiling like an elongated shield; Akhila Krishnan’s videos of unremitting waves and ship machinery roll in the background; Adam Cork’s soundscape booms mournfully.