DUSTIN!

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 16

DUSTIN!

By

Michael Ratcliffe

of the London “Observer”

There has been more Shakespeare on the London stage in the last 12 months than at any time in living memory, probably ever, and the boom shows no sign of letting up. Dustin Hoffman has made his Shakespearean debut as Shylock at the Phoenix, in Charing Cross Road. And very good he is, playing most of his English male colleagues into the floor without ever running off with the play as flashier Shylocks are often tempted to do.

It is bad form to stress his superior intelligence and imagination since The Peter Hall Company aspires to be an ensemble of equals and declines to so much as mention Hoffman’s name outside the theatre, or in the press listings for the show. If that isn’t High Art, I don’t know what is. The drama of Hoffman’s Shylock lies in its

compact, physical tension — the slight figure, the gleaming watchful eyes — and the natural expressiveness of his great hands, defending, attacking, assessing the odds. British critics and audiences sometimes reel from the physicality of American acting. Not here. Hoffman is like a coiled snake who strikes only when certain of victory — like a tactician, a foreigner, a survivor finally shattered by the stunning injustice of his defeat.

His phrasing is unorthodox by English convention, but the meaning is always clear. Far from sounding fearful of Shakespeare’s language, he makes it his own. The Peter Hall Company is the third Shakespearean ensemble to play the Phoenix in the last year. It follows, without interruption,

Derek Jacobi’s “Richard II” and “Richard III” and Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company in “Much Ado About Nothing,” “As You Like It,” and “Hamlet.” The Old Vic, no longer a subsidised house but owned by the Mirvish family of Toronto and run by Jonathan Miller, has hosted the English Shakespeare Company in a five-week season of the complete History Plays. It has also staged its own productions of “The Tempest,” “King Lear” and “As You Like It.”

Alan Bates and Felicity Kendal are playing Benedick and Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Strand. All this marks the unpredicted return of William Shakespeare to London’s West End. It seems that there is an audience for Shakespeare which rarely goes to either the Barbican or the South Bank,