Hamlet

Director Doran understands the RSC's esprit de corps as well as any director alive, and Tennant is very much first among equals in an ensemble of uniformly deft and detailed performances. Oliver Ford Davis, an actor unfamiliar to audiences outside Stratford-upon-Avon, is a sublimely pedantic Polonius. Tennant's Hamlet, in an unusual choice, entirely yields the scholarly high ground to Polonius, by turns hilarious, terrifying, and heartbreaking rather than intellectual. Theirs and all the family relationships are richly nuanced, believable without devolving into the Oedipal psychology that Freud partly derived from his own reading of this play.

Watch for Stewart doubling as the ghost of Hamlet's father, reaching out a hand to console Gertrude (Penny Downie) in a nice moment that captures the detailed, well developed, coherent interpretation discernible throughout this remarkable production.