Tufnell Park-based Riz Ahmed’s extraordinary turn is supported by a cast that excel

HAMLET
Directing by Aneil Karia
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆

IT isn’t just how lead man Riz Ahmed has tackled the most famous lines in British theatre – it is the raw emotion and intensity he brings to this adaptation of Shakespeare that makes this an incredibly powerful piece of film.

We are frequently told Shakespeare’s words are timeless, that they capture something about the human condition – and Ahmed’s 21st-century take on the Prince of Denmark physically brings the wronged son’s pain alive.

The action is transported from a Danish castle to east London. The intrigue-riddled royal family is Anglo-Indian, and we meet the family patriarch (Avijit Dutt) after murder most foul has been committed, with his son, Hamlet, taking part in a Hindu ceremony to prepare the body for its funeral.

At the wake, we hear of how the cold funeral meats can now furnish a wedding feast – and then Hamlet suffers the visitation from his father, and learns his destiny of revenge.

Instead of a spectral visitation on a castle’s battlements, Hamlet follows his father’s ghost after stumbling out of a nightclub, fuelled by drink and drugs.

He is led to the roof of an unfinished tower block, one of his late father’s developments dotted across the east London skyline. Here he is told of the dastardly plot cooked up by his uncle Claudius (a sterlingly morbid Art Malik) and his faithless mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha).

This is set partly on a cold and grimy streetscape, but it is also a city riddled with contrast.

East London provides a setting for Elsinore – the name of the property firm Hamlet’s deceased father ran – and a modernist twist and side plot has Hamlet exposed to the homeless his father has evicted, a stark contrast to the riches his family possess.

Something is very much rotten in this state.

The A11 provides a central spine: Hamlet’s famous stoic soliloquy is gorgeously, painfully expressed as Hamlet drives his BMW recklessly north from the Blackwall Tunnel and towards Hackney.

Director Aneil Karia has pared down the acts, chosen parts he feels are telling. It means no “Alas, Poor Yorick”, nor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or even a Horatio: this prince is very much alone with his troubles. This might not please the purist, but shows how Shakespeare can be re-imagined well.

And Tufnell Park-based actor Ahmed’s extraordinary turn is supported by a cast that excel: Timothy Spall’s dastardly Polonius, Joe Alwyn’s heartbroken Laertes, and Mofydd Clarke as tragic Ophelia make the 400-year-old lines impactful in a contemporary setting.