What one found when entering the Barbican’s basement theatre space to see Hamlet was not Benedict Cumberbatch. Nor did one find an elaborate set, with mechanical moving parts, wind and fog machines, or even a single solitary strobe light. What one found instead was a woman sitting at a desk, with some culinary and household utensils and ingredients.

The next hour of theatre sought to capture the spirit and essence of Shakespeare’s Dane purely through the narration and an assortment of the aforementioned household objects standing in for the actors.

The end product is a strange mixture of funny and a little underwhelming. The main problem may be that this idea would have worked better in the comedies. And over the course of a couple of days Forced Entertainment did indeed perform every Shakespeare play this way. However, with something as serious and dramatic as Hamlet, it doesn’t work as well. 

The main problem was that beyond the initial chuckle of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father as a cheese grater and Ophelia as a pot of roses, the ‘table top’ idea seems to fall short. Pretty soon the audience settle into the fact that they are simply watching a retelling of Hamlet in a Punch-and-Judy-esque set up and nothing much more. The narrator, Cathy Naden, played her part exceptionally well, guiding us through the politics of Denmark with a silky voice and simple, elegant tone. In fact, the best moment of the piece were the ones in which she broke character to comment on the length of the speech in the play or some other diversion. 

The problem lies in the fact that these moments were rare. Once everyone had gotten used to the novelty, the whole thing became a bit underwhelming, especially when one considers that the narration did not consist of any of the play’s dialogue. All of Hamlet’s wonderful speeches were glossed over with a narrative line or two.

Overall, while I appreciate the theatre company trying to do something unique with Shakespeare, it did not work with Hamlet and the end result seems to have fallen a little flat. It was very charming and perhaps if more care was taken to include Shakespeare’s dialogue itself or if the narrator had more freedom to improvise or comment upon events it may have been more engaging.