Izzard: The Tragedy of Hamlet, adapted by Mark Izzard and directed by Selina Cadell.  At The Playhouse, until August 1. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN.

This show is quite something. Suzy Eddie Izzard does Hamlet in a version that runs a little over two hours without any other actor on stage. And it works. 

A packed Playhouse stayed focused and enthralled on opening night. A few faint hearts bailed at interval but the majority were up for a long, moving and occasionally funny take on one of those great Shakespearean plays. It is fabulous to be reminded of the humour in Hamlet, which is more than the Gravedigger’s jokes.

Izzard plays everyone, from a moody Hamlet to a growling villainous Claudius to a gentle Gertrude awakening to what Claudius has done and an Ophelia who crumbles under pressure from her father and from a prince more focused on revenge than relationships.

It’s a bare stage job, with unchanging lighting and a single downlight upstage that particularly comes into its own with the Ghost and with the end of the play. Izzard ranges around the whole space, always choosing light and on a couple of occasions coming right down to the front for powerful soliloquies.

There’s a few modernising tweaks to the language but those of us mouthing along with the dialogue weren’t worried by that, so good is the energy and the fun. The Mousetrap performers are introduced by a very young and inexpert child actor, clearly still learning his trade. Two expressive hands become an immorally nasty Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The duel at the end is a riot of swapping and dying characters.

Izzard is taking this bravura show round the world and why not. It’s a mammoth challenge for an actor and it deserves to be seen and deserves to be packed out wherever it plays.

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