WHEN stoically British audiences go to “summer’ open air performances, they are weighed down with food and drink for picnics, camping chairs, tables, and in some cases rugs, snuggle-suits and pillows as they set off from the car park to the auditorium, ready to spread out and relax.

Then comes the play, and most of the touring companies aim for laughter, colour and fun, choosing the lighter Shakespearean works, classic children’s stories and other adaptations and originals. But The Bard’s plays exert an irresistible fascination, so sometimes the heavier works find their way onto the summer schedule. For a company like The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, founded 20 years ago by Bristol Old Vic Theatre School graduate Mark Puddle, Shakespeare is de rigueur – after all, the company is named after his own Tudor company, by special permission of the Lord Chamberlain. The all-male troupe has built a stellar reputation for its productions, always with music beautifully performed acappella.

This year’s music is special. The chosen piece is John Dowland’s Come Heavy Sleep, and not only does it open every performance, but it will be heard when the company goes to Denmark in early August to make its debut at the Elsinore Shakespeare Festival. So Hamlet will be performed in the castle where the story is set, and Dowland’s music will be played where he was court lutenist to the King of Denmark in the 1590s.

This year company director Peter Stickney has taken a lesser-known version of the play – keen-eared students will hear the very different ending. It is cleverly cut, with scenes morphing into each other as the seven-strong cast play the 19 characters, changing at triple-speed behind the crenellated set where the action plays out.

There are few laughs in Hamlet, but Edward Bartram makes the most of them as a recognisably pompous and preachy Polonius and the rather more earthy grave-digger. The audience at Kingston Lacy duly gasped at every familiar phrase … and there are a lot of them in this most quoted of Shakespeare’s plays. Is it invidious to name actors in touring companies? I don’t think so, when each has such a vital part in bringing a familiar play to an audience sitting in a chilly and rain-impending evening, hanging on their every word.

Mark Milligan makes an unusually touching Ophelia, and Stefan Brennan-Healy, first seen as the Oirish guard Francisco, transforms into a confused and riven Gertrude. Tom Canavan, fresh from BOVTS, is a powerfully angry Laertes, taken in by the wicked Claudius of Thomas Delacourt. Hugh Brentall is as dependable a Horatio as he is a showy self-serving Guildenstern.

It is for Hal Geller, returning to the company after last year’s Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, to lead the company. You can’t whisper soliloquies in the open air, so this is a muscularly troubled Hamlet, and he makes the familiar character crystal clear throughout the complex arguments that drive the Prince’s furious quest for justice against his duplicitous uncle.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men have again found just the right balance between pleasing an audience of picknicking occasional playgoers and respecting both the words and the intentions of the playwright.

The company is back with Hamlet at Dyrham Park on 26th and 27th July. Then off to Elsinore.

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