Sir, – I was heartened by Susan Knight's response (September 30th) to the Schaubühne Hamlet, celebrated by Peter Crawley ("The most dangerous Hamlet ever?", September 29th). Like her, I sat glumly in my seat at the end of the performance at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, in astonished dismay at the standing ovation going on round me, feeling I was just a grouchy old English professor, alone in my numbed outrage.
However, I found a telling phrase in Thomas Ostermeier's "Director's Note" in the programme where he spoke of his desire to "violate" Hamlet. Violation may well be the key both to the production and its reception. For the director it is the urge to trash a text treated for so many centuries with reverence and awe – and literal trash was a notable feature of the show. For the enthusiastic audience there may well have been an element of gleeful revenge for all those solemn hours spent with Shakespeare in the classroom. No matter: Hamlet will survive such aggressive travesty and live again in less "dangerous", more intelligent and sympathetic productions. But five stars, Peter, really? – Yours, etc,
NICHOLAS GRENE,
School of English,
Trinity College Dublin.