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From the moment PurpleCoat’s production of Hamlet opened at Smock Alley, it quickly became clear that it was going to be an entirely different take on Shakespeare’s Danish tragedy. Set on a Liverpudlian council estate in the 1980s, projected images of the city in anarchy are juxtaposed alongside snippets of Margaret Thatcher’s famous 1981 speech at the Conservative Party Conference, all set to the sound of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise.

This audio-visual attack on the senses sets the benchmark for what will become a complete reimagining of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, which is exemplified when Hamlet appears on stage, not as Prince of Denmark, but Princess. The play, which originally sees Hamlet charged with avenging his father’s murder by his uncle Claudius has been totally stripped back and reconfigured in a performance that goes beyond Shakespeare’s text to become more intensely shocking, violent and barbaric.

Each character may speak the lines as Shakespeare has written them, but the characters themselves are notably and inherently different to how we have come to know them. Margaret Thatcher’s famous line, “The lady’s not for turning,” which is heard at the start of the play becomes a central tenet of Katie King’s portrayal of the young princess, as she plays Hamlet not as brooding and indecisive young woman, but rather as the only sane and level-headed figure in the whole play. Caitlin Clough’s Gertrude is not the meek queen torn between husband and son that Shakespeare presents her as, but an unashamedly sexual, selfish and cocaine-snorting mother.

Polonius is more than “an intruding old fool” – he is both heinous and bestial throughout the play, appearing simultaneously as a fiendish father and monstrous opportunist. Whereas Shakespeare imagines Laertes as a loving son and brother, in this production, his relationship with his sister is less than familial and Polonius’ encounters with Ophelia are even more disturbing and diabolical than those of his son’s.

Indeed, it is Paula Lee as the tragic Ophelia who gave the standout performance of the three-hour drama. Playing Hamlet’s beleaguered love interest, Lee’s portrayal of Ophelia is a wholeheartedly more sorrowful and touching account than Shakespeare originally created. In a shockingly brutal exchange with her father, Opehlia’s words “I do not know, my lord what I should think” exemplify the plight of a young woman who is completely lost and victimised, and one who is viciously preyed upon by virtually everyone in her life. In this production, Gertrude’s elegiacal comment on Ophelia’s drowning as she throws flowers into her grave saying “sweets for the sweet”,  is given a much more loaded significance in the context of her pitiful existence.

PurpleCoat has completely defamiliarised the tale of Denmark’s brooding prince, creating an exceptional piece of theatre that exposes Hamlet’s themes of gender, loyalty and kingship in a unique and unconventional manner. This production transforms the world of the Danish court into an even more debauched, licentious and incestuous setting than ever imaginable in order to create a piece that somehow manages to stay true to Shakespeare’s intent whilst simultaneously reinventing its very core.

See Elynia Betts’ review of PurpleCoat’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also running in Smock Alley, here.