Brilliant Benedict, the sweet prince of the stage: Triumphant Cumberbatch treads the boards in five-star production of Hamlet after fans queued for 36 hours to see his opening night
Review by Jan Moir; extended article by Tom Payne for The Daily Mail and Sam Tonkin for MailOnline, 5 August 2015, updated 6 August 2015. Our accompanying photo comes from this article.
First there was Sherlock. Then there was Frankenstein. Now for the biggie, the monster role of them all – Hamlet. At around 7.20 last night, Benedict Cumberbatch appeared onstage at the Barbican theatre in London to face the biggest challenge of his career to date.
Dressed down in a costume of charcoal jeans and Hush Puppies, sometimes even taking refuge in a zipped-up hoodie, the 39-year-old actor stepped into the spotlight to take on the mantle of the tragic hero in Shakespeare’s epic drama.
With 1,480 spoken lines and a performance that must include a descent into madness, assorted murders most foul and a fencing scene, it is renowned as being perhaps the most difficult role in the theatrical canon, an Everest that only the most gifted actors can climb.
Review and extended article can be found here. Read Full Story
What a waste! It’s Shakespeare for the kids
By Kate Maltby for The Times, 6 August 2015
Alas, poor Benedict. It’s hard to flatten Hamlet: he is, after all, Shakespeare’s most quicksilver creation. As he wrestles with whether or not to avenge his father’s murder, our prince touches on sin, fate, truth, beauty — what he doesn’t do, as far as I recall, is distil three hours’ worth of philosophy into a Nat King Cole cliché.
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With Hamlet, the play’s not the thing – it will always be an act
By Serena Davies for the Telegraph, 6 August 2015
To muck it about, or not to muck it about, that is the question. Hamlet is probably the most famous play in the English language, although few people have sat down to read it in the way they would Harry Potter, say, or Oliver Twist. Most of us know it through performance rather than the text: our experience of it is already mediated by the interpretation of a director. And directors of Hamlet are particularly prone to having a go at the original Shakespeare: slashing chunks here, moving other bits there and generally investigating whether they can be better than the Bard.
Lyndsey Turner, the director of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet at the Barbican, the most talked about for a generation, has just done it. She’s made Cumberbatch deliver “To be or not to be” bang at the start of the play. It normally comes at the start of Act Three.
British newspapers — including The Times — slammed for publishing early reviews of the performance ahead of its official press night.
By Alex Ritman for the Hollywood Reporter, 7 August 2015
Benedict Cumberbatch made his debut as Hamlet on stage at London’s Barbican Center on Wednesday night in possibly the most hotly anticipated rendition of Shakespeare’s tragedy sinceLaurence Olivier‘s 1948 film.
But amid reports of fans queuing for hours to get one of 30 on-the-day £10 ($15) tickets for the sold-out show, an angry storm erupted over newspapers’ early reviews of the performance.
Despite the play’s official opening (and press) night being on Aug. 25, with the shows before considered previews, both The Times and The Daily Mail ran early reviews following the first night.
While The Daily Mail’s piece was overwhelmingly positive, The Times’ critic Kate Maltby gave the performance two stars, describing it as “Hamlet for kids raised on Moulin Rouge” and “pure theatrical indulgence.” The review sparked an immediate response from theater industry professionals, angry that the review had been written before the press day.
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