"Don't you ever get tired of Hamlet?" a dramatist asked me last week. Absolutely not. The leading role is infinitely variable: as Oscar Wilde said, "There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies." And the play takes on a different colouring depending on time and place. It becomes politically subversive in countries either experiencing, or emerging from, an oppressive dictatorship.
With such a profusion of Hamlets (or should it be "a hesitation of Hamlets"?) to choose from, I've selected a key performance from each decade of my theatregoing life. First Michael Redgrave (1958), who was an unforgettably tormented intellectual. Then David Warner (1964), attenuated, insecure and heavily scarved; Derek Jacobi (1977), whom I saw play the role on a sodden night at Denmark's Kronborg Castle; the immaculately spoken Michael Pennington and Jonathan Pryce, articulating his father's ghost (both 1980); a fiery and energetic Kenneth Branagh (1992); and David Tennant (2008), who invested the role with his own whimsical humour. Most recently, there was Rory Kinnear (2010), the observed of all observers in an eavesdropping tyranny.
I'm aware that leaves out a slew of fine Hamlets, including Nicol Williamson, Ben Kingsley, Albert Finney, Mark Rylance, Simon Russell Beale and Ben Whishaw. Of the two women I've seen play the role, the German actor Angela Winkler memorably highlighted Hamlet's tenderness. And, among several Hamlets on film, my favourite remains Gregory Kozintsev's 1971 version, which reminded us that Hamlet is only one figure in a bustling, hyperactive court.
But if I had to pick the performance that has stayed with me through the years it would be that of Redgrave, who gave us every facet of the character: hysteria, danger, meditativeness and, towards the end, a beautifully stoical acceptance of death.
• What are your favourite versions of Hamlet? Let us know in the comments below
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