Hamlet & Co. Barons Court Theatre.

Anais Marchand’s immersive modern language adaptation of Hamlet sets the action in the cut and thrust of a struggling big business. The audience is formed of friends, office colleagues, and board members of the Hamlet Corporation. We are gathered to mourn the death of old Hamlet, but as Gertrude (Jacqueline Headlam), dressed in corporate wedding white, wisely advises us, “in grief we find direction”.  In Gertrude’s case, the direction is a beeline towards her brother-in-law Claude (Andy Egwuatu). Together, the duo has a 61% share in the company, and when all is said and done, “grief is temporary, power is forever”.

Old Hamlet’s depressed and grieving son Amel (Steph Hunte-Wilson), formerly dad’s preferred successor, is understandably miffed by events. Determined to figure out how Dad died, he sets out to track down a mysterious USB stick with CCTV evidence of events on the night in question. But “to know or not to know” that is the question. “If I find it, will it save me, or bury me, too?”. Given we only have an hour here and Marchand is determined to bring us a happy ending, he had better hurry up.

As if Amel did not have enough to do, his girlfriend, Olivia (Anais Marchand), is pregnant and unsure if she wants the baby. “Go to a nunnery”, he tells her or failing that, “a podcast or a start-up”.  Olivia’s sister, Bernadette (Irene Possetto) and father, Paul (Tino Orsino), complete the quintet. The audience gets to vote on what the CCTV shows in the Mousetrap scene (the educated review night audience chooses poison in the Ghost’s coffee), with two audience members gamely acting out the gruesome murder. We also get to vote on Claude’s culpability in the death. Perhaps the Bard missed a trick there. The tone of the piece aims at TV’s Succession but ends up a country mile wide of the mark.

Writer and Director:  Anais Marchand