The readiness is all….

Last night, however, we suddenly found ourselves at the centre of what we are also there to do, as journalists as well as critics, when the reason for all the preceding clamour around the production in the first place suddenly went absent: David Tennant had missed the final preview the night before, and was still poorly last night, owing to what Gregory Doran announced in a speech from the stage before the performance was “a very severe back injury”. So we would be seeing, and reviewing, the understudy, Edward Bennett, instead.

In what must be a first for an RSC press night, Doran then invoked the spirit of Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street, and said he told his new star to “go out a youngster and come back a star”, and ruefully added, “So no pressure there.”

Of course, with the entire run sold out - so there is no opportunity to reschedule a press night if and when Tennant returns, even if they wanted to - they had no option but to proceed; and in any case, as artistic director Michael Boyd commented in a press statement issued earlier in the day, “As an ensemble company we feel that it is important to go ahead with tonight’s performance. While understanding that some people will be disappointed at not seeing David Tennant on stage, this production, like all our productions, is more than the sum of its parts - an ensemble of actors, designers, composers etc. and we should respect that by going ahead as planned.”

That’s a striking contrast to the position taken when Frances Barber, playing Goneril, sustained a cycling injury just before the scheduled opening of Trevor Nunn’s RSC production of King Lear and led the press night to be postponed for some six weeks. Nunn said in a press statement at the time, “”It is very unfortunate that Frances’ injury means we must delay the press performance of Lear but Ian (McKellen) and I both feel that the production should be seen in its entirety as it has been rehearsed.”

Of course different directors (and different actors) take contrasting approaches to the full integrity of the conditions in which their work can be seen, at least by critics, and on that occasion the circumstances were also that that understudy - not named in that statement - was evidently not ready: “It would be unfair on the understudy to be reviewed in only her second performance in the role,” Nunn claimed.

But Hamlet has had a full Stratford run already, and as Doran points out in a press statement himself, “It is an indication of the RSC ‘s investment in understudies that Ed Bennett can take over from David in one of Shakespeare’s largest roles at such short notice.” Indeed, the RSC regularly stages full understudy runs - and on the RSC website, you can find a fascinating account by Keith Osborn, who is also in the Hamlet company (where he understudies Patrick Stewart as Claudius and the Ghost) on the preparation required. And there’s clearly a big commitment to it across the entire company: Osborn writes that under Boyd’s ensemble policy, “all company members contribute to the understudy process”.

So last night’s press performance turned into a public test of that. But if the critical fraternity duly accepted it - though the press office made an offer to accommodate critics at a later date if and when Tennant returns, every national critic who was due there last night attended - what of the public who have bought their tickets on the strength of Tennant’s name? Unfortunately for them, the ensemble principle holds firm for them, too - and no refunds or exchanges are currently being offered.

Oddly enough, I was sat behind Nica Burns, theatre owner and producer, last night, and I asked her what her company did when Josh Harnett missed four performances in his current West End run of Rain Man at the Apollo Theatre; and although not obliged to offer them, she did indeed do so. Roughly a third of the audience, she said, took up the offer to return for a later performance instead (by contrast, when Kathleen Turner was out of some performances of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the same theatre that Burns also produced, a similar offer only saw 10% of the audience re-booking).

I’ve previously written here of forever regretting a similar decision I once took to cancel seeing the National’s production of Hamlet after Ian Charleson fell ill in the title role - his understudy was Jeremy Northam, who soon become a major actor in his own right. Northam was, incidentally, playing Laertes at the time, too - as Mr Bennett was originally scheduled to last night; and it’s far from the first time, of course, that a Laertes has graduated to the title role. In 1984, Kenneth Branagh played Laertes to Roger Rees’s Hamlet for the RSC; he later played Hamlet, also for the RSC, in 1992, and then in his self-directed 1996 film version. One or two actors have even done it the other way around: in 1994, Damian Lewis played Hamlet at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park; then the year after, played Laertes to Ralph Fiennes for the Almeida at Hackney Empire that subsequently travelled to Broadway.

Only the other day I was, to quote Dogberry, saying that comparisons are oderous. Yet though readers of reviews don’t necessarily need them between different stagings of the same shows - as I was writing about Carousel at the time, since they won’t necessarily seen others — what about different performances in the same role of the same production?

That’s where the critics have inevitably focused some attention today. Having seen Tennant in the summer, the critics are uniquely qualified to now point out that audiences who are forced to see Hamlet without the intended prince are not actually being entirely shortchanged. Though Benedict Nightingale in The Times says he’s always longed to write the phrase “a star is born”, he’d have to say instead, “a good actor is evolving”, and goes on to compare him with Tennant: “Though his Hamlet’s strengths include the gift for mimicking others that marked Tennant, he hasn’t the same variety, intensity or excitement. And where Tennant began by displaying a devastating grief, Old Hamlet’s death and a bad world have instead left Bennett angry: an emotion that often recurs and sometimes transmutes into self-contempt. He got a standing ovation, and maybe deserved it for valour in the theatrical field. But I’d give him a sitting ovation, sorry for an actor who hasn’t had Tennant’s chance to explore drama’s trickiest, most demanding role.”

It is a judgement echoed by Michael Billington in his Guardian review: “Bennett’s Hamlet is very different in tone and style, as you might expect, from Tennant’s, which was filled with demonic energy, airy lightness and caustic humour. Bennett, who is tall, well graced and clear-spoken, emphasises rather more Hamlet’s moral disgust with the prevailing corruption. He echoes and redoubles the Ghost’s cry of “Vengeance”, spits on the corrupted Ophelia and, catching Claudius at prayer, talks of his “sickly days”, in the tones of a hellfire preacher. Bennett incorporates some of Tennant’s business such as his manic shout of “Whee” as he propels himself off stage in an office chair. But this is a more robustly traditional reading of the part which marks Bennett down as an actor to watch.