Performing arts Robert Tanitch

No literary figure has inspired so many operas, ballets and musicals as Shakespeare. There are three kinds of music. the wags used to say. good, bad and Ambroise Thomas. It's a great pity when you think what Verdi might have made of Hamlet that he should have given up the idea of writing an opera after he heard of Thomas's popular success.
Michael Carre and Jules Barber provide a romantic, melodramatic libretto in the French 19th century grand opera manner. At the Paris premiere in 1868, the Prince, surprisingly, did not die, an error which was rectified when the opera came to London the following year. Hamlet hasn't been seen at Covent Garden since 1910.
Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's badly lit production (from Geneva's opera house, conducted by Louis Langree) puts back the happy ending and drops the ballet. The opera does not begin on the battlements, but with the coronation of Claudius and Gertrude, which is followed by a love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia. The Prince (Simon Kenylside, impressive) is not in inky black but casual white clothes and bare feet. He has a good scene with his mother (the formidably wigged Yvonne Naef) whom you feel he might well murder, there being no Polonius behind the arras for him to kill.
There is some good old-fashioned histrionics when Hamlet, in front of the whole court, accuses Claudius (a dull Robert Lloyd) of having murdered the king. Kenylside crawls along the supper table, pouring red wine all over the tablecloth and all over himself. I haven't seen such a gory mess since Peter O'Toole played Macbeth.
The reason Hamlet ditches Ophelia in the opera is because he finds out that her father was complicit in his father's death. Thomas gives Ophelia a spectacular mad scene in the florid, Donizetti. Lucia-manner. Self-mutilated, she bleeds to death on a stage strewn with flowers. Natalie Dessay's virtuoso singing is the production's high spot.
The Ghost, a towering figure, naked but for a shroud, bears a striking resemblance to Thomas's memorial statue in the Pare Monceau in Paris. The Ghost turns up at Ophelia's funeral and orders Hamlet to kill Claudius. There is no duel with Laertes. Hamlet is acclaimed king of Denmark and Gertrude Lis packed off to a nunnery.
The set — two hefty, curving walls, constantly and distractingly on the move — behaves in a manner far more insane than Hamlet ever does. They always seem to be on the point of pushing a member of the company into the orchestra pit. The stagehands can be seen struggling to control the walls, a Laocoonian-like battle.
Stephen Storace turned The Comedy of Ermrs into an opera in 1786 and Frederick Reynolds turned it into a spectacular entertainment in 1819, which included songs from all of Shakespeare's plays. Ever since then the farce has been every stage director's plaything. Two rap versions are playing now, having arrived in London in the same week. 77te Bomb-itty of Ermrs, which began life at New York University in 1998, is the more
professional, the more intelligent and sophisticated of the two shows. I enjoyed it a lot. The authors know their Shakespeare and stick closely to the text. The American cast includes four exuberant, inexhaustible, immensely likeable, cross-dressing rappers and an on-stage DJ. The rappers play all the roles, male and female, and both the verbal and the physical gags have a dextrous energy. The farcical and dazzlingly quick changes in the finale are hilarious. Chris Edwards is particularly funny in three contrasting roles: servant, dumb blonde and trigger-happy cop.
DJ Excalibur's Da Boyz at Stratford East purports to be based on the Rodgers and Hart 1938 musical, The Boys from Syracuse, the first Broadway musical to be based on a play by Shakespeare. But the music has been remixed to such an extent that the score is barely recognisable. The acting on stage and video is very amateurish. The production's main appeal is the break dancing by local youths.
When London has already seen so very Many ballet versions of Romeo and Juliet to Prokofiev's score you wonder why the Royal Ballet of Flanders should bring their innocuous version to Sadler's Wells. Prokofiev is heavily cut. The characterisation is insubstantial and there is no real tragedy. Juliet wakes up in the tomb before Romeo dies, but only, it seems, so that they can dance a nin-of-themill duet. Andre Prokovsky's choreography is never an alternative for Shakespeare's incandescent verse. His most original touch is to concertina the deaths of Mercutio and Ty halt into one continuous, slow-motion sequence, but this robs Mercutio of his unforgettable solo when everybody presumes he is playacting as usual and nobody realises he is mortally wounded. Mercutio is just a larky, immature youth, who urinates in the drinking fountain. The Nurse bears no relation to Shakespeare's earthy original; Friar Lawrence is no more than a walk-on role and the set has the least romantic balcony imaginable.
Hamlet is at the Royal Opera House. Box office: 020 7304 4000.
The Bomb-itty of Errors is at New Ambassadors. Box office: 020 7369 1761.