The production skilfully blends the radically different quarto and folio versions. It aims to illuminate the world’s most fascinating theatrical text, rather than impose a superficial interpretation upon it.

Hamlet is revealed as a troubled young man who can trust no one—not even the ghost of his father. His attempts to find a meaningful response to his father’s murder and his mother’s remarriage to the chief suspect end in tragedy.

On the way to its violent climax, the play illuminates and explores the human condition with such profundity that Hilaire Belloc famously noted:

“If a person has not read or seen Hamlet, they may as well have spent their life at the bottom of a deep well.”

The production focuses on Hamlet as performance, since most of the characters are performing a lie: old friends are spies; Claudius performs the role of a good stepfather; Hamlet’s mother plays the caring parent; Polonius presents himself as an honest broker; and even poor, doomed Ophelia pretends she is alone with her one-time lover.

The greatest actor of all is Hamlet, who performs his own illusory madness.

Nothing is what it seems, and there are no fixed meanings. The world drives those who try to make sense of its riddles quite mad.

Director Paul Stebbings explores this theatricality using life-size puppets, highly theatrical ghosts and comedy interwoven with tragedy—as Shakespeare intended. This is not a play about inaction, but about a constant search for truth and justice.

The production is enhanced by Thomas Johnson’s powerful music, sung and played by the actors and interwoven with the text in the manner of a film score.

This revival tours castles and palaces across Europe, offering audiences a unique opportunity to get to grips with the greatest story ever told.

Recent press on TNT Theatre and Paul Stebbings’ Shakespeare productions

“I never knew Shakespeare could be so entertaining.”
— CNN TV

“From the very first moment, the audience was held in a vice-like grip. TNT prove that Shakespeare can be made relevant to modern audiences anywhere.”