THEATRE / Oh] what a piece of work: Paul Taylor, watching Richard Dreyfuss's debut production of Hamlet in Birmingham, finds himself warming to Claudius

Whatever next, you wondered, on hearing that Richard 'Jaws' Dreyfuss was to direct Hamlet at the Old Rep, Birmingham - Goldie Hawn's Cymbeline at the Bolton Octagon? Ambulance-chasers perked up still further, already twitching on their starting blocks, braced themselves when the news broke that Susan Hampshire (slated to play Gertrude) had left the production during rehearsals.

Had Dreyfuss wanted her to go topless and / or to take part in a lesbian fumble with Ophelia? Had she actually been hired to walk out in a cynical bid to swell the advance bookings? Sitting through the stupefyingly dull finished product suggests a more prosaic explanation: a simple preservation instinct on Miss Hampshire's part.

Dreyfuss maintained that he wanted an actress with an 'earthier' quality, but if Celia Montague is anyone's idea of earthiness, well, I'm Gillian Taylforth. Her Gertrude wafts about the supposedly Viking set with the caring demeanour of a North Oxford social worker. True, she is seen having a passionate snog with Claudius in a little interpolated scene at the start and, at the end, has a burst of energy in which she tries to knife Laertes and strangle Claudius. In between, though, she's a don's wife who has done a course in counselling after the children have grown up.

At the start, the courtiers are heard chanting: 'Clau-di- us, Clau-di-us' and you wonder how he's achieved such popularity so fast. Once you clap eyes on the ghost of Old Hamlet, his relative attractions become clear. Encased in armour from top to toe, the poor actor impersonating the deceased king has to mime to the pre-recorded voice of Steven Berkoff - and Kenneth Williams himself could not have elongated more elastically the line 'Oh, horrible] oh, horrible] most horrible]'. Matching the action to the strangulated word, the actor assays some pelvic thrusts during the 'luxury and damned incest' bit, so that far from hailing from the afterlife, this apparition seems to have been summoned from some Dial-A-Pervert agency. 'Remember me,' he enjoins; you'd have your work cut out forgetting him.

Russell Boulter may resemble a non-tubercular D H Lawrence, but he is the most stolid, level-headed Hamlet I've yet seen. Of the Prince's lonely speculative intellect, you get no inkling. At Wittenberg, this Hamlet must, you feel, have been studying for a combined honours in chemistry and geography. There's barely a hint of dangerous levity to his 'antic disposition'.

Not that his performance is helped by Dreyfuss's inept staging. His near rape of Daniele Lydon's Ophelia is enacted on the top of the wooden bridge; Polonius and Claudius, hidden behind a curtain below, would need a periscope to spy on it. Destroying the thematic point through overkill, the First Player moves himself to such a crying jag by his speech about Hecuba that his colleagues have to mop him up and kiss him better. At the end, Fortinbras does not come on, ready to take charge of the corpse-strewn stage; instead the lights die, in corny cinematic close-up style, after Horatio's 'good night, sweet Prince/ And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest]' Dreyfuss does not see that Hamlet's painful prominence in our mind is paradoxically enhanced by the widening of focus to include a type of being who could not begin to comprehend Hamlet's story or significance.

The Old Rep theatre is a peculiar setting for the Hollywood star's directing debut. It was the country's first and once its leading repertory theatre but its days of glory are long past. The spirit of Barry Jackson's original outfit survives, however - 10 minutes walk away at the Birmingham Rep, where, at the moment, you can see a fine Tempest mounted on the vast main stage by its artistic director, Bill Alexander.

Spectacular, carefully thought- and felt-through, and with the intriguing concept of Prospero as 19th-century Darwinian researcher, the production is, in every respect, superior to Dreyfuss's 'flat, stale and unprofitable' but sadly more media-genic experiments nearby. As somebody said during the second interval, this Hamlet doesn't even have the decency to be an outright fiasco.

Hamlet, Birmingham Old Repertory Theatre, to 15 Oct (021-616 1519)

(Photograph omitted)