With a bold new staging of this classic play, based around the sinking of the Titanic as a visual metaphor for the collapse of the Danish royal family, students enjoyed a vitally important performance context that brought the text to life and suitably captured the ramping-up of tension and unravelling of sanity the play is most famous for. The clever stagecraft, making use of digital screens as a backdrop to project imagery of the ocean and the slow sinking of the ship, ensured that the audience paid rapt attention to the drama on stage, and we were very pleased and proud to be complemented by members of the public expressing their appreciation of how our students comported themselves!

The exciting performance really served to underline how important and beneficial it is for students to visit the theatre and consider performance contexts, which then will allow them to apply this understanding to other plays throughout their study of English Literature.