Georgina Brown reviews Hamnet, a tale of Shakespeare, his prophetic spouse, and the sorrow of their departed child.

Hamnet (Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon)

Verdict: The healing power of theatre

Judgement: ****

Another week at the theater, another adaptation of a novel. But Lolita Chakrabarti’s deft distillation of Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning Hamnet – an imaginary exploration of Shakespeare’s family over 18 years – becomes something new and fresh.

Summarized to just over two hours, it gives a voice to the unheard and unknown women closest to Shakespeare, but also suggests how the playwright’s personal life seeped into his plays.

In particular, how his savage grief over the death of his son, Hamnet – buried a stone’s throw from the recently renovated Swan Theater – inspired his greatest tragedy, Hamlet.

Another week at the theater, another adaptation of a novel. But Lolita Chakrabarti’s deft distillation of Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning Hamnet – an imagined exploration of Shakespeare’s family over 18 years – becomes something new and fresh, writes GEORGINA BROWN

That comes in the more theatrically adventurous second half of the play. For it begins dutifully, though beautifully, faithfully to the novel, albeit with a clear chronology, beginning in 1582.

In rural Warwickshire, Will (Tom Varey), a 17-year-old boy teaching Latin to the sons of a local farmer, falls under the spell of their half-sister Agnes, pronounced Ann-yez.

This is Anne Hathaway, traditionally known as an illiterate woman who forced her toy boy Shakespeare down the aisle when she became pregnant, then was left with the kids in Stratford as he set out to make a name for himself in London.

O’Farrell – and now Chakrabarti – tells a different story. For Agnes and Will, it’s an instant attraction of two sharply contrasting creative minds.

Agnes tells us that she reads with her hands, while Will is good with words. The relationship is joyfully consummated at the apple store.

This Agnes is a remarkable creation, which is even more evident in Madeleine Mantock’s compelling performance. She exudes an earthy aura. One with nature, she can make medicinal tinctures from herbs.

More unusually, she has premonitions, senses the unseen and, as an evocative soundscape reveals, hears her late mother’s presence in cries above the wind.

Their Midlands accents (a hint of The Archers, set nearby) make London seem remote.

And that’s where Will goes, desperate to escape his bullying, drunken (slightly one-dimensional) father and expand the family’s glove business. That brings him to the theaters, because actors need gloves.

In Erica Whyman’s atmospheric production, the various women handle things indoors with smooth efficiency: giving birth, cooking, nursing the sick and then, in an almost unbearably moving scene, winding up the body of 11-year-old Hamnet in preparation for his funeral. .

With his father’s sense of drama, Hamnet (excellent Ajani Cabey) decides to “trick” Death into switching places with his dying twin sister, Judith (a transfixed Alex Jarrett).

Shakespeare the playwright only finally emerges when Chakrabarti moves away from the novel – and from the rustic beams in Stratford – to Shakespeare’s wooden O: the Globe Theater on Bankside.

In fragments from his plays in which twins are mistaken, in the images of hands and gloves, in fragments of actors that have been retained and reformulated, and in the first production of Hamlet, when he brings his dead son to life, we glimpse of the ghost of a magpie. . . and the alchemy of a wizard.