The Play’s The Thing: A One Person Hamlet at Wilton’s Music Hall 1st April to 12th April 2025
‘Lockyer’s performance is a tour de force’ ★★★★
Wilton’s Music Hall’s The Play’s The Thing: A One Person Hamlet is a striking testament to the power of minimalist theatre, anchored by Mark Lockyer’s virtuosic performance. The production strips Shakespeare’s tragedy to its raw essence, delivering a brisk 95-minute whirlwind that feels both urgent and timeless. Mark Lockyer, under Fiona Laird’s deft direction, delivers a performance of astonishing versatility, proving that a single actor—armed with nothing but skill, imagination, and a half-drawn red curtain—can make Elsinore’s shadows feel thrillingly alive.
The production’s aesthetic is elegantly stripped-back, relying on the raw power of storytelling rather than ornate spectacle. The partially drawn curtain, a clever nod to the makeshift theatricality of Hamlet’s own “Mousetrap,” frames the stage like a child’s earnest living-room production—an apt metaphor for a play obsessed with performance and artifice. Yet this simplicity is deceptive. Every choice feels deliberate, from Lockyer’s fluid physicality to Tim Mitchell's masterful lighting, which conjures the Ghost of King Hamlet through stark, angular spotlights. The effect is chillingly spectral, evoking the eerie minimalism of a Victorian lantern show. When the Ghost looms over Hamlet, its presence is rendered not through CGI grandeur but through the primal interplay of light and actor—a reminder that true theatrical magic lies in suggestion.
Born from pandemic-era innovation—Laird conceived the idea after seeing Lockyer excel in a socially distanced two-hander—this adaptation thrives on clarity and momentum. The collaboration pays off: Lockyer’s command of the text is absolute. His Claudius is a masterclass in regal menace—a newly crowned king whose charm masks the sweat of guilt, his ambition as palpable as a knife’s edge. In contrast, his Hamlet is a whirlwind of modern neuroses, oscillating between sardonic wit and raw despair. The prince’s grief for his father feels viscerally real, his disgust at Gertrude’s hasty remarriage laced with a bitterness that transcends centuries. Lockyer’s vocal dexterity and physical precision ensure each character is distinct, yet the transitions are seamless, as though the ghosts of Elsinore are possessing him one by one.
That said, the production’s narrow focus comes at a cost. While Lockyer’s male characters pulse with psychological nuance, Gertrude and Ophelia are sketched with frustrating brevity. Gertrude’s moral ambiguity—Is she complicit? Naive?—is flattened into a broadly maternal archetype, while Ophelia’s descent into madness lacks the haunting complexity that makes her tragedy so piercing. It’s a rare misstep in an otherwise fiercely disciplined adaptation, though perhaps an inevitable one when a single actor shoulders the weight of every role.
Lockyer’s performance is a tour de force of focus and invention, his transitions between roles so fluid they feel almost alchemical. This is a Hamlet as a tightrope act, balancing Shakespeare with bold reinvention.
For Shakespeare purists, it’s a fresh lens on a familiar masterpiece; for newcomers, a riveting entry point. Either way, it’s a masterclass in what theatre can achieve when talent, vision, and text collide.
The Play’s The Thing: A One Person Hamlet
By William Shakespeare
Presented by Regeneration Theatre
Directed and Edited by Fiona Laird
Wilton’s Music Hall
1st April to 12th April
The Play's The Thing: A One Person Hamlet - Wilton's Music Hall
