Luke Thallon Rides the Stormy Seas in a Maritime ‘Hamlet’

In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new “Hamlet,” the Danish royal court is all at sea — quite literally.

The set is a ship’s deck that tilts and creaks ominously while a screen plays eerily textured footage of a roiling ocean. At several points, the action pauses and an ensemble of actors in Edwardian dress scatters around the deck in panic, wearing Titanic-style life vests that foreshadow the play’s catastrophic climax.

It is a risky move to evoke a sinking ship: If the play falls short, the wisecracks practically write themselves. But this “Hamlet” — directed by Rupert Goold and running at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon through March 29 — proves seaworthy, thanks in large part to Luke Thallon’s psychologically absorbing turn as the embattled prince. Already grieving for his father and sickened by the recent remarriage of his mother, Queen Gertrude (Nancy Carroll) to his uncle Claudius (Jared Harris), Hamlet learns that Claudius had in fact murdered his father, and he is therefore duty bound to exact revenge.

This is always a lot for anyone to take in, and Thallon — a rising star with recent stage credits in “Patriots” and “Leopoldstadt” — portrays Hamlet’s anguish with a vulnerable, semi-abstracted candor. He delivers his lines in a pensive, haltingly conversational rhythm, as though feeling his way into them; we get the sense of a man continually processing his incredulity at the baroque predicament in which he finds himself.

Thallon also uses his body to good effect in a lithe, controlled display of nervous physicality. He is rag-doll-like, dynamic in his despondency. Now and then, he enlists the audience for moral support, throwing us a wry, self-pitying smirk, or striking ironically hammy poses.