Book your passage now on the not-so-good ship Elsinore. Despite it being bound, like the Titanic, for a watery grave, tickets are likely to be going fast thanks to the starry entertainment on offer.
For director Rupert Goold, set designer Es Devlin and a team of RSC engineers have gone overboard in translating the action to a passenger liner in 1912. While the stormy seas are visible in its wake, the tilting lower deck lurches with every jolt to the sickly ship of state that is Hamlet’s Denmark.
The text requires a few minor adjustments, and there is no redeeming Prince Fortinbras to the rescue, but the concept works beautifully. There is a sense of disequilibrium from the start, a sense of characters trapped by fate, and eventually sliding, literally, into oblivion.
Luke Thallon gives a fine psychologically-driven interpretation of the title role, his Hamlet so possessed by disillusion and resentment against the queen, his mother Gertrude, that he cannot take the risk of putting his faith in his love, a beguiling Nia Towle as Ophelia. Only after the murder of Elliot Levey’s fusspot Polonius does madness take hold for real.
Thallon’s performance is characterised throughout by a feeling of spontaneity, with frequent pauses, hands sometimes flailing as if trying to grasp the right word, then phrases pouring out in a torrent of release. He shares some nifty swordplay too with Lewis Shepherd as Laertes—credit here to fight director Kev McCurdy.
Jared Harris plays Claudius as an amoral schemer, easy in his usurped kingship, unmanned when the murder of his brother is revealed, but reverting to cruel type thereafter, subjecting Hamlet to a little gratuitous water torture until shocked courtiers intervene.
Nancy Carroll is a feisty Gertrude, giving as good as she gets until turning her back on Hamlet’s tirade to smoke a defiant cigarette, but still able to evoke a spark of unextinguished love in her vengeful son. The venerable Anton Lesser, a terrifying Ghost who leads Hamlet into the ship’s engine room, turns up again aptly as the leader of the players who will perform the re-enactment of the old king’s murder, and Chase Brown and Tadeo Martinez provide a little light relief as the preppy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The production will tour English venues in spring 2026 including Truro, Bradford, Norwich, Nottingham, Blackpool, Newcastle, York and Canterbury.