William Shakespeare: Hamlet

If you were to watch his new Hamlet born at the National Theatre of Craiova meticulously, with the eyes of a cold analyst, then you would probably just shrug your shoulders, for the production doesn’t answer any of the “eternal” questions, it doesn’t present you with a concept, it is not proving to be “requisite” or “topical” in “these tragic times”…So then, why is it exactly that all you want to do at the end is to rush back to watch it all again as soon as possible? Because it is alive. Though this is a great tragedy almost imprinted in gold on a stone, the blood that runs through this production’s veins is warm.

Donnellan knew and still knows better than most how to combine sensibility and elegance in theatre. He does it in such a way that you keep thinking about yourself, even though nobody is going to shame you from the stage, push you, nobody is calling you to account, nobody is even trying to impress you. Donnellan is irreproachably delicate but yet, at the same time, resolute. Everything here is simple, darting, pulsating, breathing, and nothing is superfluous.

Cheek by Jowl
Cheek by Jowl have established an international reputation for bringing ‘fresh life to the classics using intense, vivid performances like a laser of light to set the text ablaze’ (The Guardian). The company has toured to more than 400 cities in 50 countries and is an Artistic Associate at the Barbican, London.
 

Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod formed Cheek by Jowl in 1981. Since then the company has presented over 30 productions across six continents in five different languages.

In 1989 Donnellan was made an Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre in London. Declan Donnellan has received awards in London, Moscow, Paris and New York, in 2016 winning the Gold Lion Award at the Venice Biennale. Originally published in Russian in 2001, his book The Actor and the Target has since appeared in fifteen languages. Donnellan and Ormerod were made OBEs in 2017. Declan published his latest book, The Actor and the Space, in 2024.