The Hamlet Project

Among the photographs from 60 years of the Fringe in Princes Mall (well worth a detour) is one of Derek Jacobi with his school's all-male Hamlet. I understand that they got all the good Hamlet reviews that year, with other major productions suffering in comparison.

It's fortunate that the only other Hamlet this year is a version for kids, because any others would doubtless have suffered in comparison with Drama Centre 43's The Hamlet Project. This has just about everything you could ask from any production, let alone a student one.

It's a re-imagination of the original that allows you to see the original in a fresh light. Having two Hamlets ' and both Benjamin Askew and Robert Donnelly are stunning ' allows the character's duality to emerge without it ever seeming even slightly gimmicky. Multi-tasking is pretty commonplace these days but Hannah Kaye - who not only adapted the play and then directed it very well indeed but also plays both Claudius and Gertrude - takes it to new levels. Elizabeth Brodie's Ophelia goes mad better than any I've seen and her Scottish Horatio is a joy.

I was afraid that John Dagleish as Laertes was rather stiff and awkward but he was only fooling me. By the time he had also been Polonius, Osric, the Gravedigger plus a multitude of minor roles he had proved that he could change size, shape and character at will, and do a Shakespearian vamp-'til-ready as a bit of technology failed slightly. There's a stunning ghost too.

Not only is this an imaginative Shakespeare production, it's also one of the most clearly spoken ones I've ever had the pleasure of seeing and hearing.