This is the biggest theatrical event of the year, when Doctor Who puts down his sonic screwdriver and picks up his rapier as the fated Prince of Denmark.

And yet from the moment David Tennant takes to the stage, you can forget all that larky, face-pulling Time Lord stuff. 

This is something new and different. It is, quite simply, a fine actor at the peak of his powers delivering Shakespeare’s greatest part with an astonishing blend of energy, clarity and that much overworked word, charisma.

I cannot recall a theatre falling so silent as Tennant and the other principals delivered their words. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s temporary Courtyard Theatre was a cough-free, fidget-free zone. This was an audience spellbound. 

Tennant is tall, painfully thin and looks 10 years younger than his 37 years. He has immersed himself body and soul in this Gregory Doran production and the result is pure quality. 

He speaks beautifully, effortlessly stressing the 400-year-old poetry. Yet at times, notably in his meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Sam Alexander, Tom Davey), the flow is so natural that it could have been scripted yesterday. 

But this show is not just about a great Hamlet. It is a great and memorable company, too.

Patrick Stewart (another sci-fi hero late of the Starship Enterprise) plays both the Ghost and the wicked uncle Claudius in fine style while Oliver Ford Davies plays Polonius as a nit-picking old duffer in a cardigan. 

Mariah Gale is a frail, hysterical Ophelia and Penny Downie’s Gertrude is a brittle beauty consumed with guilt and dying inch by inch long before she takes the poison. Mark Hadfield’s gravedigger is a wisecracking North Country comedian, delivering one-liners as he tosses the skulls aside.

The good news is that this production which unfolds seamlessly on a stark black Robert Jones set, is a magnificent night out. The bad news is that, largely thanks to the Time Lord effect, every single seat has been sold out until the end of the run in November. 

Review by Peter Rhodes