‘The devastated space of the Gdańsk Shipyard became one vast indictment, and every audience member was a Hamlet,” Klata declared years later. Whom, and of what, was this young director — this being only his third production — accusing? Piotr Gruszczyński saw the basic premise of the performance as follows: ‘In the new state, among the useless tools of the striking workers, the spirit nouveau-riche vogue holds sway’. Łukasz Drewniak named the forces the young prince had to confront directly: ‘Grzegorz Gzyl’s Claudius is a theatrical Kwaśniewski — cosmopolitan, likeable, but best not to look too closely into his past’.
In one of the opening scenes, Claudius and his court sat casually at a large table, sampling wines instead of discussing the rising threat from Fortinbras. He rhapsodised about their tastes and colours, drilling his courtiers in the proper pronunciation of foreign labels. The self-satisfied, somewhat smug man betrayed no shadow of the crime he had recently committed. He still revelled in the atmosphere of his wedding to Gertrude (Joanna Bogacka), suggested by a few balloons scattered around the hall. When the mood struck, he would nimbly leap onto the table to show off a few dance moves. The ‘Mousetrap’ — clumsily staged by the ‘tragic troupe from the capital’ (Alina Lipnicka, Igor Michalski/Arkadiusz Brykalski, Jan Sieradziński) — seemed to bore him so thoroughly, with its tacky, shrill acting, that he nodded off. But it was an act. He sensed something stirring in the court. With a cold, imperious tone, he ordered Rosencrantz (Wojciech Kalarus) and Guildenstern (Rafał Kronenberger), who cluelessly brandished a V-sign associated with Solidarity, to ship Hamlet out of the country. When that failed, and Hamlet killed Polonius, Claudius exploited Laertes’s grief and persuaded him into a treacherous duel with a foregone conclusion.