Adrian Lesters Hamlet is poised precariously between boyhood and manhood and it is a performance of thrilling simplicity and assurance His handling of the text and his physical and psychological selfcontrol take him in one leap from brilliantly promising to frontline player an actor with the intelligent confidence to be almost selfeffacing Lester plays an edgy tetchy young man who feeds on a bankeddown sense of anger agile watchful and driven he deploys a sense of acid wit and generous humour that makes him both formidable and lovable Although played down the virtuosity of this performance is unmistakable Observe Lesters body the way his arms hang stiffly giving you a sense of a figure waiting to be animated Handys portrayal of Horatio gives you a similar feeling of a body being moved by an inner force that he both knows and does not know So what is acting What is behaviour Is the former an imitation or an evocation of the latter Who and what animates these bodies morally and physically That is the central question about the life of the theatre