In the mid-nineteenth century, William Macready, the greatest Hamlet of his generation, asserted that no actor could fully fill the role until he was too old for it and had the maturity, wisdom, and life experience required to defeat youth.

Contrary to what his grumpy teenage behavior or Laertes' remark about “a violet in nature's youth” might suggest, Hamlet has probably left the first bloom behind him.

The gravedigger's words suggest that he is thirty years old.

In the course of the history of the stage he has been performed in many guises, including by Sarah Bernhardt, who embodied him in 1899 when she was in her mid-fifties as a distinctly boyish being.

Gina Thomas

Features correspondent based in London.

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The fact that Ian McKellen, an eighty-two-year veteran, is now taking on the challenge is an event for the Book of Records. The news went like wildfire through the theater world. The pandemic has fueled the tension even more, because the staging in the charming Theater Royal Windsor at the foot of the royal castle had to be postponed again and again. One day after the loudly announced exemption from the pandemic restrictions, which was associated with high expectations, the premiere could finally take place in front of a full house. The freedom-loving British almost all complied with the theater's urgent recommendation to wear a mask.

McKellen last appeared on stage as Hamlet fifty years ago.

He himself admits that he did not do justice to the role at the time.

A sharp-tongued reviewer noted that McKellen's greatest achievement was bowing after the performance was over.

Now McKellen first steps in front of the audience in Victorian mourning clothes: with a top hat, frock coat and a stiff face under dark glasses.

Then he turns in sync with the others, forming a long line of actors from one end of the stage to the other, turning his back on the audience.

In doing so, the company slowly opens the umbrella, under the protection of which they listens in the snow to the king's hypocritical mourning address with which this performance, which dispenses with the first scene, begins.

Even from behind, the cramped posture reveals the bitterness with which Hamlet perceives the words of his hated stepfather. It is the most picturesque moment in Sean Mathias' breathlessly hectic production. Trimmed to less than three hours, it takes place in the timelessly dark prison setting of stage decorator Lee Newby. With the chiaroscuro lighting, the echo of slamming metal doors and rattling steps, it looks like a modern version of Piranesi's dungeon visions. The prison metaphor has been used countless times for the threatening world of Elsinore, from which Hamlet cannot escape. Here it is sometimes as if everyone were in the closed psychiatry, an impression that is reinforced by the shaved heads of Hamlet, Ophelias and Gertrude.