Hamlet: Prince of Sweden ****

Tom Corradini excels in his satirical Hamlet: Prince of Sweden — oddly archaic and beautifully physical. It is the second of a five show day at Teatro Fisico, a new Fringe venue in a small space upstairs at the Fruitmarket Gallery, just by Waverley. This is probably the Fringiest Fringe experience I've had and Tom Corradini’s theatre feels anachronistic in the best way. It is a reminder of techniques lost, of a theatre of good form and physical shape. A theatre to be sipped meditatively rather than shocked into the system. 

It is appropriate then, that the theatrical culture lampooned in Hamlet: Prince of Sweden is one that feels like it has all but disappeared. It is a culture where Hamlet is a pinnacle and it is worth resisting. One where the bright lights of the West End appeal towards celebrity, where actors pout and swoon at Act 3 Scene 1. We're not in such an age anymore, theatre is perpetually underfunded and met with general disinterest, but it doesn't stop the performers from having the old days in their bones. 

"The boss" often calls Corradini, understudy to Nike Redding's Hamlet from a phone and barks instructions at them. The cast around them seem to be dropping like flies. Corradini wants a theatre with sex and violence – Redding wants a theatre with word above all. It's ripe material for a farce and one the performers pull off very well. Redding is a brilliant Hamlet, moody and moving. Corradini's understudy is gently funny, and his eyes pulsate like they might pop out. It's a great performance. 

Eventually, the performers realise they must stage Hamlet simply, with just two of them. So they begin. It's a rather redacted version of the work but that's what makes it fun. Two homemade puppets become Gertrude and Claudius, Corradini's bald head becomes the skull. The performers ease into it and start to perform theatre, there in the rehearsal room. It's a really beautiful show in this way, it's really about the dreaming and potential intrinsic to theatre, a dreaming we lose as soon as it becomes commerce - and found again in those strange portions of history where the commerce allowed us to dream again. 

It skirts around, rather than dives into the endless complexities of Hamlet, but Hamlet's a rather difficult play, closer to literature than theatre if we're thinking in a very 'well made' manner. And as an act of theatre Hamlet: Prince of Sweden excels. Warmly funny, compellingly performed.