All things must come to an end and with Jude Law appearing in HAMLET, the Donmar season at the Wyndhams Theatre comes to an end.

Bringing the Donmar's signature style into the west end has obviously been a successful endeavour along with it's affordable pricing policy. But the lure of big marquee names starring in each play obviously played it's part as well as the season having the typical default setting - Chekhov (IVANOV) and Shakespeare (TWELFTH NIGHT, HAMLET). But then they might have a point as the fourth play, Yukio Mishima's MADAME DE SADE was the one that received the more damning reviews.If anything HAMLET encompasses what has been good and bad about the season. Michael Grandage, who has directed each of the plays, has directed HAMLET in a very clear, no-frills production which certainly focuses on the performances and the text. Although it worked well during the first act (this production's interval came after the "To Be or Not To Be" scene) about halfway through the second act I was yearning for something new, some insight into the play's particular power, some changing of the directorial style as we neared the final cataclysm. But none came and on it stepped steadily as if slightly in awe of the text, ultimately casting a safe and - oh all right I'll say it - dull air over the proceedings.

Christopher Oram again came through with a defining look for the play. His Elsinore was an uninviting cold castle of thick stone walls and flagged floor but he was less successful in his modern dress costume design of black on black. I felt most sorry for Gertrude, she must have known something was rotten in the state of Denmark when for her opening court scene the dressers of Elsinore could only provide her with a long cardigan. I'm sure it was very expensive but a cardigan is a cardigan.

The only chromatic shift was for the Players who performed the Murder of Gonzago is white costumes and Ophelia playing her mad scene in white flannels. I can only presume that this costume choice was the reason that Gertrude's magnificent speech on Ophelia's drowning was curtailed of it's final 8 lines including the poetic imagery of her garments first bearing her then pulling her down. If it was, it was a particularly stupid idea.The performances were fine for the most part. Peter Eyre was a sonorous Ghost/Player King but in the key roles of Hamlet's contemporaries Matt Ryan was too emphatic and pulled the focus too much (I suspect to make up for the fact the he is the understudy Hamlet!) while Alex Waldmann was a tad milquetoast as Laertes.

As Ophelia Gugu Mbatha-Raw was less turbulent than her name. Although she hit some nice grace notes, Grandage's take on the character was far too nimminy-pimminy with hardly any internal life hinted at all. Her mad scene floated away like a soapy bubble although the Neil Austin's lighting was particularly impressive. Ron Cook followed up his fine performance as Sir Toby Belch in TWELFTH NIGHT with a sly and oily Polonius, the best I have seen since Michael Bryant in the 1989 National Theatre production.
Kevin McNally was a very fine Claudius, for once played as an all-too-human man rather than as the pantomime villain so often before. He was particularly good in the prayer scene, trying to find a salvation long since gone. Penelope Wilton - despite the damn cardigan and loss of most of her Ophelia speech - gave an equally nuanced performance as Gertrude, suggesting the subtle shift of her character away from Claudius when she realises the consequences of her actions.

I have always suspected the boy actor who played Gertrude originally must have been hired only for his looks and Shakespeare dropped the big speech where she explains her point of view. So you need an actress of a particular quality to give the character the depth the text doesn't give her.And that leaves us with the melancholy Dane. Jude Law is an actor who I have seen twice before on stage LES PARENTS TERRIBLES and TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE and both times he has played a man falling victim to a dangerous passion. Hamlet is of course in the thrall of a passion of revenge but I never actually felt that from Law although there was much in his performance I enjoyed. He is certainly a charismatic stage actor, much more so than in the films that have been crafted around him to little effect. He spoke the verse well and it must be said that the production slackened when he was not on stage.

But I never felt for Law's Hamlet. Most of his soliloquies seemed to come more from a hard-edged cynicism than from a genuine grief or contemplation and certainly he was more effective in the scenes where he confronted those he felt had let him down - Gertrude, Polonious, Ophelia, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Laertes, Claudius. He finally lets down the combative guard during the "Let Be" speech and in his final moments but it would be a particularly bad actor who couldn't touch you in these scenes. The good news for Law is that after a few performances at Elsinore Castle, the production will relocate to New York in September for a limited run.

However the greatness of the role means that there are as many valid ways of playing the role as there are actors to play it. It is now amazingly 20 years since I saw the performance of Hamlet that for many reasons I doubt I will ever see bettered. Ian Charleson was already suffering from the later stages of the AIDS virus when he agreed to take over from Daniel Day-Lewis who spectacularly walked out of Richard Eyre's production at the National Theatre. Despite fears for his own health Ian was determined to play a role he had always wanted to re-visit.

I can still remember the chill that crept over the auditorium when the audience collectively held it's breath in realising that the unrecognisable cast member with the swollen face was none other than Ian as he started Hamlet's rejoiner to his mother in the first court scene. All the published rehearsal shots had seen him in shades so to see the ravages of not only the illness but the medication was such a shock one felt it would ruin the evening. But he pulled us back to the play by quite simply turning in a performance as courageous as it was heartbreaking. His verse speaking was phenomenal, making the most well-known lines sound fresh with intelligence and clarity just as his verbal swordplay with Michael Bryant's Polonious sparkled allowing him to use his great comic timing.

As Jude Law started the "We defy augury" speech I felt myself welling up as I always hear Ian's voice saying those lines of stoicism in the face of death:

There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come:
the readiness is all:
since no man has aught of what he leaves,
what is't to leave betimes?
Let be.

At the curtain call he seemed totally drained - the sustaining power of Dr. Theatre over for the night - but was enveloped with cheers from a standing ovation. In less than three months the rest was silence.

How appropriate then that in 1994 Jude Law won the 'Best Newcomer' for LES PARENTS TERRIBLES in the annual Ian Charleson Awards. These have been awarded since 1991, the year after his death, to the best stage performer under 30 in a classical role, a fitting tribute to a great actor taken from us too soon.