Hamnet – Garrick Theatre – Saturday 17th February 2024

(Rated Novel 5/5, Play 4/5) William Shakespeare had a Wife, Who caused him no Strife, By name of Agnes Hathaway, She cheered him on the right Way, To lead us to Emote, From the Plays what he Wrote! Whoops, ok, I will leave that there and refer you to the master playwright William Shakespeare for far superior witty. profound and moving rhyming – or not – Elizabethan verse and prose. However, in ‘Hamnet’ the play/novel, Will Shakespeare plays a supporting (or not, depending on how you view the story 😉) role to Agnes Hathaway, who is in fact the key character in Maggie O’Farrell’s book, and the play adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti.

The Agnes created by O’Farrell was a herbalist and healer with ‘uncommon powers’, maybe psychic and possibly enabling her to communicate with the spirts. In the book, we are introduced from the outset to her son, the titular character Hamnet, and the story jumps around in time as we follow Agnes’ highly moving story of love with Will, the joy of children, the pain of separation from her husband while he lives in London to make his name as Queen Elizabeth I’s most famous playwright, and devastating impact of ‘the pestilence’ on her family. O’Farrell says ‘Hamnet’ is a work of imagination and that her 'idle speculation' on Shakespeare's son and the reason for his death led to this highly emotive extraordinary exploration into the possible characters/personalities of Hamnet's mother Agnes, twin sister Judith, older sister Susanna and maybe most notably his never named father! It has a lovely stream of consciousness element and wondrous exploration of love, relationships, death and grief. Above all if there is even the remotest 'factual truth' to it William Shakespeare would never have found himself without Anne Hathaway and the influence of her way of being as drawn in this book can be seen throughout all his plays. Add to that the power of the loss of their golden-haired boy and how William may have written Hamlet as a way of processing that loss... and therein lies the playwright's genius through life experience.

I loved the book, and this play not so much. For me the latter suffers a little from having to be told in chronological order, though twins Hamnet (Ajami Cabey) and Judith (Alex Jarrett) do appear on stage in the loft as though communicating to their mother Agnes (Madeleine Mantock) even before she has met their father William (Tom Varey). I think my other difficulty with it was simply we were sitting so far back, it was hard sometimes to even tell who was which character, let alone be able to explore the beauty of their facial emotional expressions. We do, however, get a strong sense of the nature of life in Stratford, and later London, at that time, and the recreation of Agnes’ affinity with nature and how she loves to be at one with it, is remarkably clear. Will is immediately struck by Agnes when he sees her flying her hawk. She is beautifully wild and free, both grounded, yet other-worldly, and of course then he falls for her. It doesn’t take them long at all to conceive their first child Susanna (Phoebe Campbell). Having put a baby in her belly. Will has little choice but to marry Agnes. For me, the play somehow gives the impression that Will was trapped into this marriage, and then held back from seeking fame and fortune by Agnes and their children. I got a totally different sense from the book, where Agnes very much encourages Will to go to London, knowing he can make more of himself than as a Latin Teacher. Meanwhile Agnes very much held everything together at home. One of the devices I loved in the play was as Agnes was in labour with them, each of the actors playing her children, gradually walked over to her and gifted her a ‘baby’ carried in their arms. As always, act 1 was the set-up, and act2 explored at far greater depth the connection between Will’s family experiences and aspects he put in his plays. Ophelia gifting herbs before she commits suicide and the witches could all have been inspired by his ‘medicine woman wife’, and twins appear in many of his plays. Again, for me though, showing that on stage, rather than expressing it in the character’s thought processes in a book, somehow take us away from Agnes and more into Will’s mind. Until, that it, the denouement. Following Hamnet’s death, Agnes travels to London and witnesses a production of ‘Hamlet’. It gave me, and clearly her too, goosebumps seeing Ajami Cabey (Hamnet) playing Hamlet “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt…”

As far as I could see the RSC ensemble gave great performances, and it was a very good production. I think I personally am always greedy to be able to fully experience performers in all their close-up glory!

Unfortunately, as I write, this production of ‘Hamnet’ has finished, but there will always be productions of Agnes’ husband’s plays for all time, and now we have Maggie O’Farrell’s book bringing Agnes and her beloved son Hamnet to life for all time too. Hamnet – Review by TheRestrictedReviewer © 2024