Crowd goes wild as Tennant returns to Hamlet

Thousands of fans were left disappointed when the Doctor Who star was forced to pull out of the play during previews early last month when he suffered crippling pain from an old back injury.

It was feared that the 37-year-old would have to sit out the entire run of the Royal Shakespeare Company's sold-out production after having an operation for a prolapsed disc on 11 December.

But he surprised the audience at the Novello Theatre when he appeared in the title role on Saturday night.

The crowd gave him a standing ovation after expecting to see understudy Edward Bennett.

Tennant, whose performance during the August run in Stratford-upon-Avon was highly praised, now hopes to complete the London run which ends on Saturday.

However, the RSC said it could guarantee nothing.

A spokesman said: "David has made good progress following his recent back operation and began rehearsals on Friday in preparation for his return to the title role in Hamlet. He rehearsed again on Saturday and performed that evening. We will be assessing David's return to each Hamlet performance on a day-by-day basis so patrons are being invited to check our website from noon each day for an update."

Bennett, who shot to fame when he took over Tennant's part and received warm reviews, will now return to his original role of Laertes.

Tickets for the West End run sold out in under two hours, and many have expressed anger they did not get a refund when Tennant could not appear.

But theatregoers who attended the actor's comeback performance were full of praise, adding that some small allowance had been made for his condition.

Tony Greenway, 42, of York, said: "We'd already been told by letter that Tennant definitely would not be performing, so when the producer came on stage just before the play started and announced that Tennant was back, the whole place went wild. Even Sir Ian McKellen, who was sitting about five rows in front of us, went bonkers."

Writing on Tennant's website, another fan said: "Before the show, someone came out and announced David was going to perform - we think so the play wasn't interrupted by all of us yelling when he appeared.

"The only real change we could see was that he was slightly slower when jumping up on things and he didn't pull [Polonius's] body off the stage.

"They darkened the back of the stage and someone else moved Polonius then David pulled a less weighty object across the front of the stage. You might not even notice this if you weren't really close."

A small number of tickets are still available at the box office from 10am on the day of each performance.