Izzard: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Bohm, Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse - 31 Jul-1 aug

 Suzy Eddie Izzard has been touring this one-woman Hamlet since 2024 across the US, UK, Canada and recently New Zealand and Australia, with plans to perform in other countries in the future. It is a marathon effort, playing 23 characters across around 2 and a half hours of Shakespearean dialogue, plotting and counterplotting, in a story of desperation, revenge, inner turmoil and outer rebellion. And while, yes, it is to a certain extent a stunt, it's for much of its length a reasonably bold and impressive stunt.

Izzard's performing history as a stand-up comedian and street performer means that it's a very direct in-your-face production - barebones in terms of set, lighting and costumes  (two side lights means that if Izzard stands near the back of the stage she strikes two notable shadows, and a single spotlight near the back of the stage is used for appearances by the ghost). It's easier in scenes with only a few characters and some characters register more than others - Orphelia slightly disappears except for her mad scene, and the sword fight near the end is a mishmash of a lot of swirling around. The script has been trimmed and slightly modernised by Suzy's brother Mark (so Hamlet no longer talks about bearing fardels, but bearing burdens instead, and the post-death speeches are a lot brisker) and Izzard moves fast through the speeches - taking her time over some of the soliloquies but rattling through a lot of the text at quite a pace, demanding the audience keep up - and for the most part we do. Her Hamlet is a somewhat aloof, suicidal intellectual who cannot stop from arguing with the world around her - even before the ghost shows up, she's already talking about how this too too solid flesh should melt - and it feels like the play gets somewhat more chaotic after intermission as Hamlet's first attempt at revenge goes hideously awry. 

This is a powerful night of theatre that keeps an audience captured through multiple hours of solo shakespeare, and while it may not be the easiest or most powerful Hamlet out there, it's an impressive event.