Hamlet (National Theatre, 2025): AO5 Discussion
Hi all!
I went to see the National Theatre's version of Hamlet this year (2025), starring Hiran Abeysekera, and I thought that it was an excellent form of AO5 for people studying Hamlet for their English Literature A-levels!
Here are some of the things I thought were interesting that you could talk about in your essays:
- Abeysekera chose to break the fourth wall quite often in his performance, highlighting the ridiculousness of some scenes and making us aware of the fact that he feels like everyone around him is performing. In some ways, his play-within-a-play, 'The Mousetrap', is the most real thing about the court. This aligns quite nicely with what Maynard Mack says in 'Tragedy and Madness' from the Edexcel Critical Anthology for Tragedy. It originally comes from his work, 'What happens in Shakespearean Tragedy', from Everybody's Shakespeare (1993).
the predicament of the artist – Shakespeare himself, perhaps – who, having been given the power to see the 'truth', can convey it only through poetry – what we commonly call a 'fiction', and dismiss.
- Ophelia was played by Francesca Mills, who notably also played another important character in a Jacobean Revenge Tragedy (ish), the titular Duchess in The Duchess of Malfi. She was in the Shakespeare's Globe (2023) performance, and apparently, she was incredible! She's also a little person, which I think emphasised for me the way the more powerful characters in the court (particularly the men) infantilise Ophelia. It makes it even more uncomfortable to me. Her portrayal of Ophelia was so interesting because she portrayed a usually quite demure character as very outgoing and confident. So, it felt like the machinations of the court wore her down and turned her into the mad version of herself that she becomes. I think there's some nice feminist readings that you can attach to this about how fights for power and honour can leave women as shells for their former selves.
- I found Geoffrey Streatfeild's portrayal of Polonius to be really interesting! For me, it was the first time that I saw Polonius as a truly sympathetic figure. He just seemed like a dad telling dad jokes and trying to do what was best for his children. The decision to make him strum on his guitar and the enthusiasm of Ophelia and Laertes to engage with him helped that. I loved that their encounter, where he talks in platitudes, is portrayed almost like a ritual. With the way Ophelia grabbed the money he handed when she finished his platitudes, it made it seem like this is something they regularly do, like some sort of family bonding activity. I genuinely teared up when Ophelia spoke about the death of her father. I truly believed her that she felt like all goodness had left the court.
- The biggest thing that stood out to me is that Gertrude is arguably the only character with a true positive change character arc! If you portray her as siding with Hamlet after the bedroom scene (like this version did), she realises that siding with Claudius was a bad idea and decides to take the poison to save her son. That's so interesting to me! Despite the misogyny of the court, Gertrude can be portrayed as the only character who learns anything. I'll go into that more in the comments.
But why does this matter?
Well, in your English Literature A-level exam, AO5 is all about being able to speak about alternate interpretations. So, the more you can say about different performances, adaptations, writings about the text, etc, the better.
There are multiple different ways to do AO5. So check out my dedicated post for more details on that!
In your exams, you should use AO5 to either back up your argument, or to explain why your argument is stronger than someone else's! So you can either talk about how an interpretation fits into your interpretation, or say 'while this person suggests this idea, some quotes from the text undermine that because...'
Reading posts where people talk about the creative decisions people made in performances and adaptations can really help you to come up with these interpretations! The creative decisions they make come from how they interpreted the text, so the more you can talk about that, the better!
I know both Edexcel and OCR expect you to use AO5 when you're writing essays about Hamlet in your exam, so this is useful to have!
How can you use this post to improve your AO5?
- First of all, read my blog post on AO5!
- Then, come back to this post and read it, along with the comments where I and other people add their thoughts on the creative decisions!
- Add the things you noticed about the creative decisions in the comments!
- Comment to other people's posts to explain what you think those creative decisions reveal about the creators' interpretations of the text.
- Bookmark AO5 posts related to the texts you're studying.
- Come back to these posts to make revision resources about AO5 or to write essays including AO5!
Please comment with your thoughts or ideas about the text – if you've seen it!
And don't be afraid to ask questions! I specifically made this community so you could always have a place to chat to an expert tutor (if I may say so myself), as well as other people studying the same subjects as you!
Here are my thoughts! If I come up with any others, I'll add them below!
- They really played up the idea of Gertrude being the only one with a true character arc. They made her do some quite overt things to show how much her conversation with Hamlet affected her, such as pulling her hand away sharply when Claudius tries to hold her. He's also a lot more aggressive with her, which makes it easy to find her more likeable. She has a positive change arc, going along with Claudius earlier on and then choosing Hamlet by the end. In the actual script, this is more ambiguous. For example, you could interpret Gertrude saying that Hamlet is mad after their conversation as her covering for him like he had asked or her just being earnest since she just saw Hamlet talking to no one in the chamber. She's also really pointed when she drinks the poison that she's purposefully disobeying Claudius, which I really like.
- The choice to cast Gertrude as a South Asian woman for me (as a half-South Asian person) was interesting, because it made me more hyper aware of the fact that she might have been making the most out of a difficult situation. Arranged marriages are quite common in our cultures, and her being South Asian reminded me that she might be choosing the marriage which makes the most sense to her to maintain her position and lifestyle. It also helped me to see how trapped in the middle she is: she's clearly trapped in the middle of Claudius and Hamlet, and the fact that Claudius is quite aggressive towards her adds an interesting racial component to their relationship.
- I'm still mulling over how I felt about Ophelia. I think the actress who played her was excellent and hard-working, but I think there were times when she lacked range in her energy levels, which meant that it could sometimes feel quite overwhelming. I liked how she's just a party person at the start, but I wanted her to be calmer in certain parts to really draw attention to those moments when she is most over the top. My students at school have also mentioned that her being a little person made them notice how infantilised Ophelia was more. They expressed it as a bad thing (e.g. 'I didn't like how they infantilised Ophelia. It made me feel uncomfortable that they're treating a little person like a child, holding her hand and picking her up').
- I'm not sure how I feel about Horatio being a woman. The actress was amazing, but it did remove some of the possible queer reading from the text. Although that was clearly compensated for with the way that Hamlet acted around Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He slaps their bums at some points, and puts his arms around one of them in a loving way. When Hamlet asks one of them to check on the players, he returns while zipping his trousers up, which implies he had a sexual encounter with one of them. Of course, with the homoerotic meme going around TikTok at the moment like the old 'Kissing my homies good night' thing, a lot of my students in school didn't perceive this as queer, but actually more like banter.
- I think in the script, you're supposed to see Polonius as a bit of a bumbling idiot. I've never really liked him in other versions. This Polonius was really likeable, though. He was softer with his kids, and it seemed like he just wanted the best for them. His forgetful moments feel more like a silly dad than a mentally feeble, controlling courtier. The guitar part with Ophelia literally made me cry, because this performance really spends a lot of time establishing how much his family love each other (that little bit with Ophelia and Laertes competing for the money makes it seem like he's just giving them the same fatherly advice he always gives them).
- I didn't like the part where Hamlet doesn't have a gun in his hand and then kills Polonius. Not just because it made me jump out of my skin, but because the way Hamlet is portrayed in this version is as if he's never been mad. He breaks the fourth wall constantly, which makes him feel like the character who is most grounded in reality. He has regular Jim from The Office moments where he breaks the fourth wall and we share how silly things are with him. So, it seems to come out of nowhere that he hallucinated something so big. It was even more confusing that we see that from his perspective like that, especially when they don't make us see the ghost straight after. It's one random time where we see into his world and notice that he's really mad, which doesn't really work for me with the way he's portrayed elsewhere.
- I did like the choice not to show the ghost when Hamlet is talking to Gertrude. The Kenneth Branagh film adaptation shows the ghost there, which makes him seem real once again. In this version, we see from Gertrude's perspective, which makes us empathise with her more: she's seeing her son go mad and deteriorate in front of her eyes. Of course this is the moment when she snaps out of things.
- I liked the fact that the actor who played Hamlet, Hiran Abeysekera, portrayed his character as much younger through his body language and behaviour. Often, Hamlet is portrayed as a deeply introspective older man, he's probably around 30 and still at university. His grumpy asides in the play and rants make him seem much younger than many actors portray him as. Abeysekera nailed that.
Now let me give you an example of how I would use some of this AO5 in an essay:
Although it at first appears as though women have no place in Elsinore, Gertrude's development over the course of the play suggests otherwise. She is arguably the only character who experiences any true character development, while the others remain flat archetypes of the Jacobean revenge tragedy genre. Though her allegiance with Hamlet is more ambiguous in the text itself, as she might have said he was 'mad' after watching him 'hold discourse' with 'incorporal air', her choice to disobey Claudius in Act 5, 'I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me' indicates that she is making a final act of rebellion to assert her love of her son. Indeed, this idea of Gertrude's growth is emphasised in the 2025 National Theatre production, where she violently pulls her hand away from Claudius after her discussion with Hamlet in her bedroom, and then subsequently spends the rest of the play chafing against her husband's growing aggression towards her. This creates an interesting implication: although women are often the victims of unfair treatment and are ascribed blame unfairly, they are the most able to grow and improve, compared to the men of the play. Furthermore, women do not experience anything that the men do not: both Ophelia and Hamlet display how 'the poison of deep grief' over the death of a father can lead to madness and suicidal ideation, and Gertrude's fate is significantly more graceful and less brutal than the mens'. In fact, both women die on their own terms, which gives them a sense of agency that the men do not.
Building on something I mentioned about AO5 here, the 2025 National Theatre performance of Hamlet actually changes the location of the 'O that this too solid flesh would melt' soliloquy. They have all the other characters freeze on stage and make Hamlet deliver his speech directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall as he does throughout the play.
The way that they do this makes the soliloquy feel simultaneously more intimate and performative than it would be if he just delivered it alone and like he's talking to himself. It makes it seem like Hamlet is aware of the fact that he is in a play (obvious from the fact that he is breaking the fourth wall) and also that he has some control over the play itself. I mean, he literally has the power to freeze time to deliver a speech to us.
In performances and adaptations where Hamlet speaks to himself, you get the sense that he is suicidal. In this version, because he's so aware of the audience, it feels more like he's saying to us, 'Look how pathetic and stupid this whole farce is'. It heightens the theme of performativity, making it clear that Hamlet is playing roles from the beginning and also emphasises the frustrated, angsty parts of his character over the genuinely grief-stricken ones.
Khadija S. correct me if I'm wrong, but did you join because of me saying I have Hamlet AO5? If so, here it is!
Hi! Yes, I did. Thank you so much!!! ?
I also noticed upon checking the cast for this that the actor who plays the Ghost (Old Hamlet), Ryan Ellsworth, also plays the Player King from Hamlet's play-within-a-play and the main gravedigger in the grave scene! It seems to me that casting the same actor to play multiple roles adds to the sense that he always represents the spectre of death in the play. Any time Hamlet is being reminded of, or reminding other people of, the former leader and the way the court was before Claudius committed fratricide/regicide, the same actor appears! It's so interesting to me.
Not as interesting as versions of Hamlet where the same actor plays Claudiuis and the Ghost, though! Like Patrick Stewart in the Royal Shakespeare Company version of Hamlet, starring David Tennant! That seems to say a lot about honour, duty and responsibility for me!