The Last Hamlet, the new show from Lost Dog, frames director-performer Ben Duke as an embittered and defensive prince of Denmark. People are fed up with his play, with his character. His show has been cancelled, and it’s only by petitioning the government that he’s been allowed this last performance – on a “reduced budget”, with soft toys standing in for most of the characters. It’s classic Lost Dog territory, mining classic literature for modern insecurities and embarrassments. Though there’s plenty of wit and invention, the central dilemma doesn’t land. Duke and dramaturg Karthika Naïr evoke monstrous masculine stereotypes, but keep them at arm’s length.
Wrestling with literature has been a central theme for Lost Dog, with award-winning spins on works from Paradise Lost to Medea. As a choreographer, Duke blends speech and dance, often with live music and comedy. The sheer scale of the classics is a key joke, such as the time he staged Milton’s war in heaven with paper dolls and a hail of dried chickpeas.
With The Last Hamlet, that monumental quality is on stage from the start. On his first entrance, Duke is literally dragging the weight of the play, wrapped in a harness and pulling Soutra Gilmour’s set behind him. It’s a huge shelf unit stacked with cardboard boxes, which he opens to reveal everything from other characters to nasty surprises. Duke begs audience members to read lines for supporting players, or throws toys up to the theatre balcony when he needs to suggest a battlement.
A radio set plays an interview with theatre director Katie Mitchell describing her production Ophelias Zimmer, which aimed to free the character from the world of Hamlet. Mitchell is bored with plays about “depressive, violent, misogynist men”, and has had enough of Hamlet.
Hearing this, Duke’s Hamlet is twitchy and self-justifying, resenting being cancelled: of course he’s not misogynist! “Some of my best friends are” – long pause – “are misogynists.” He tries to prove his innocence by asking his mother Gertrude, represented by a large toy goose, with a script where her only line is “no”.
Duke edges towards bigger questions about art: what do we choose to revive? Who decides, and on what authority? For a moment, his Hamlet sounds like a cancelled comedian, railing that he’s silenced but still holding the microphone. The production cracks open this can of worms, then sets it down.
Unpacking violence and misogyny, Duke focuses on Hamlet’s father. Where many of the characters are toys, Hamlet senior is dancer Miguel Altunaga in a terrifying lion headdress, with a full mane and the suggestion of a skull in its face. There are echoes of Disney’s The Lion King, which borrowed much of Hamlet’s plot. Duke’s lion onesie suggests Hamlet’s attempts to imitate his father, and his own childishness.
Old Hamlet is a bullying parent who keeps urging his son to man up, sending him off to boarding school and giving him weapons as birthday presents. Altunaga prowls the stage, soft-footed and predatory, or looms up in Will Duke’s video design. He’s always belittling young Hamlet, encouraging his jealousy and pushing him towards violence.
Altunaga makes a fearsome presence, but the character is a two-dimensional threat. Where other Lost Dog shows unpick the messy, petty feelings behind grand narratives, Hamlet’s father stays more symbolic than personal. He’s too easy to blame.
Similarly, while Hannah Shepherd’s bold Ophelia offers a different perspective, she has to spend too much time pricking Hamlet’s selfish bubbles. Though we get glimpses of her own risky choices, she remains very much a supporting character, dragged in Hamlet’s wake.
There’s much more complexity in the relationship of Gertrude and Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. In one terrific, excruciating scene, we see them dancing to Yazoo’s song Only You at Hamlet’s Year 7 disco. Altunaga and Shepherd dance and bicker, both needy and bad-tempered. Duke piles up layers of social awkwardness – the school setting, the self-conscious dancing, child Hamlet’s embarrassment at adult behaviour, adult Hamlet’s dawning recognition that this was already an affair. It’s wonderfully precise, funny, and sad.
The dance scenes are another strength. Altunaga and Shepherd swoop into Latin moves, or push Duke into swaggering through Muddy Waters’ song Mannish Boy. Playing live on stage, Anna B Savage offers softer, plaintive songs, a contrast to the increasing darkness of the story.
