I WENT DOWN to Brighton the other week to see
Peter Brook's Hamlet before it set off for Moscow. It opens shortly at the Vakhtangov Theatre where it is not likely to cause the thunderous protests that clapped around Akimov's head when he put on an unorthodox Hamlet at the same house twenty- three years ago. It is not the company the Russians wanted, nor the one that the British Council would have suggested if the choice had been free. But if the Muscovites can grasp the finer points of Paul Scofield's antic-romantic Prince in English, and absorb the bluff subtlety of Alec Clunes's King, they will have an interesting evening, especially in the second half of the play. which goes as well as I have ever seen it. For those to whom the appeal must be through the eye the outlook is rather less exciting. The production, as 1 say, was not in the first place intended for Moscow : otherwise Peter Brook would surely have asked George Wakhevitch, his designer, for a more striking picture. The dun tones and plain clothes no doubt do something for the atmosphere, but will that be understood? Or will the Moscow critics conclude that the capitalist theatre is not only degenerate but hard-up as well?
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