Hamnet – Garrick Theatre, London

Writer: Lolita Chakrabarti, based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell

Director: Erica Whyman

Little is known of William Shakespeare’s family life, save for the names, and even then there is some doubt. He and his wife Ann (whose father referred to her as “Agnes”) had three children: first, Susanna, with whom Agnes was pregnant when she and Will married; and then the twins Judith and Hamnet, the latter of whom died as a child.

Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet gives the Shakespeares a family life beyond the names, imbuing them with sufficient life that the abrupt removal of a son rends a hole of grief through the household. That novel took advantage of the written form to jump around in time in ways that do not work as well on stage. Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation adopts a more linear interpretation, with Act I concentrating on the courtship and marriage of Agnes (Madeleine Mantock) and Tom Varey’s Will.

In this linear narrative, the Shakespeares’ children are not born until just before the interval, but their presence is felt throughout. Agnes is an intuitive woman, attuned to nature and with an ability to sense the supernatural; around her, her future children flit and play. But their presence is muted, allowing for a concentration on Agnes herself – an orphan whose late father bequeathed a dowry, allowing her more agency in choosing a husband than many women of the time – and her growing affection for Varey’s son of an emotionally damaged, abusive glove-maker father.

Throughout, Mantock and Varey make Agnes and Will an engaging, believable couple, given strong support from Peter Wight and Liza Sadovy as Will’s parents. The nature of the play as an adaptation is much in evidence, its multiplicity of scenes sometimes feeling as if Chakrabarti is ensuring that as many recognisable chunks of the book as possible are reflected on stage.

By the time the children become part of the action in the second act, Will has achieved success as playwright in London, and visits Stratford a few times every year. Chakrabarti, led by O’Farrell’s work, emphasises this is out of necessity, and that the family is benefitting from his success. Dramatically, it does mean chopping and changing between family life, where Ajani Cabey makes for a charismatic and engaging Hamnet, and a representation of Shakespeare’s acting comrades in London.

And while such diversions are doubtless of interest to fans of the playwright – this is a Royal Shakespeare Company production, after all – it means that there is an ever decreasing amount of time to devote to the titular character. Cabey gives us a young lad who is imbued with his father’s quick wit and his mother’s nurturing instincts, taking special care of his twin, Judith (Alex Jarrett).

When plague visits the household, the relationship between the twins, both as characters and as actors, comes into visceral, propulsive focus. The loss of Hamnet moves the whole play into a darker place, as Agnes and Will deal with their grief in different ways. It is this mood which pervades O’Farrell’s book, but here feels just one point along the tale of the family’s life.

Hamnet, then, gives us a tale of Agnes Shakespeare, née Hathaway, as a character in her own right rather than a side note to her husband’s career as a dramatist. For that husband, we see one interpretation of how a glove-maker’s son became the most renowned playwright of all time, and how his grief over the loss of his son may have found a release in his subsequent works.

This take is not without interest in itself, but it is in the performances – by Casey and Varey for sure, but mostly by Mantock, who is frequently electrifying – that the play finds its core strength. Whether taken as a counter to traditional assumptions about William and Anne’s marriage, or as a domestic drama that just happens to take place in an Elizabethan age, Hamnet promises much – and delivers.

Continues until 17 February 2024