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TRANSLATING Shakespeare into modern dress has become something of a contemporary cliche, though Shakespeare's own theatre always used the dress of his own time, even when togas would have been more appropriate.
More recently, Ian McKellen's Richard III, which dressed up Tudor propaganda in SS uniforms, was a notable success.
The nazi imagery of that production came to mind when I heard that David Nixon had transplanted the story of the gloomy Dane into occupied France. I couldn't quite see how the story could be shoehorned into that historical epoch and I was right to wonder, since it doesn't work at all.
Hamlet is, in many ways, Shakespeare's most contemporary play, since it tells the story of a man wrestling with the transition between a bloody tribal community into the modern age of rationalism and political intrigue.
Of all people, Nixon could turn the play into a parable for our time, as we transverse the cusp in a reverse direction, between our bourgeois past and a new future.
Anyone who didn't buy the production's glossy programme would be puzzled about what was going on. Anyone familiar with the original would be hard put to it to see who was who and why they were doing what they did. On the other hand, if you discarded Shakespearian memories and treated it as a story in its own right, it doesn't make sense either.
There is some remarkable dancing in the show, however, especially from Keiko Amemori as Ophelia and Patricia Hines as Gertrude - though the latter doesn't seem old enough to be Hamlet's mum.
Kenneth Tindall displays appropriate kingly gravitas as Claudius and his display of sexual frustration when Gertrude won't allow him into her bed is particularly fine.
Nixon has always been good at the erotic, but, in this case, the dancing is occasionally too explicit, as when Hamlet forces his mother's legs apart during their Oedipal scene together.
In all, this is a totally misconceived enterprise, not improved by the varying pastiches of composer Philip Feeney's music, moving from sub-Weill for the Germanic scenes to semi-Prokofiev in the romantic interludes.
The Northern Ballet Theatre's production of Hamlet is on tour. It visits the Nottingham Theatre Royal from March 11-15 (Box office: 08701222815), Sadler's Wells, London, from April 22-26 (Box office: 08444124300) and the Milton Keynes Theatre from May 20-24 (Box office: 08700606652).
KARL DALLAS