Shakespearean performance has been a curse for Mark Lockyer. When he played Mercutio for the RSC in 1995, it began to feel like a “daily execution”, he wrote. That led to a long hiatus from acting – also brought on by alcoholism, bipolar disorder, imprisonment and homelessness. But in taking on this one-man vehicle about the melancholy Dane, he proves – perhaps to himself and certainly to the audience – that Shakespearean performance is his gift too.
It could have turned into a circus trick or feat of memory (as it did in the hands of Eddie Izzard) but, instead, the emotional clarity of Lockyer’s performance draws you in. Every character is made distinct, without recourse to broad characterisation. Whenever he is Claudius, Horatio, Hamlet’s father’s ghost or even the guards who see that apparition, he fully embodies each of them.
