Great swathes of the play are collapsed – some of the court scenes, the Players' scenes, the Claudius/Laertes action from the return to Denmark through to the duel – and where alternative readings between the quartos are taken, they are made to work Hamlet talks of "our philosophy" not yours, Horatio. This may sound as though Lyndsey Turner's production is a riot of radical irreverence, but it's nothing of the sort, alas. He's not a "young" Hamlet, but he's a compelling and charismatic one, feigning his madness as a toy soldier in his playschool castle within the "real" castellated prison of ElsinoreĪct 1, also seriously re-jigged, starts with him listening to Frank Sinatra singing "All of me" ("Why not take all of me… can't you see, I'm not good without you") on his gramophone, like a lovelorn patsy – but is he missing Ophelia or his dead dad? – and crying "Who's there?" (filched from the cut first scene on the battlements) to someone at the door – it's Horatio ( Leo Bill), his college chum, complete with specs, checked shirt and back-pack. Therein lies its refracted brilliance, and its mystery.Īnd here's the rub: Benedict Cumberbatch delivers the great soliloquies superbly, urgently, intelligently and full of concentration, right to the top of the Barbican. ![]() ![]() What was all that fuss about anyway? Hamlet is the most fluid, alterable and oft-adapted play in the canon, always has been. "To be or not to be," has not gone back to its "proper" place in Act 3, pace The Times, but to the middle of a drastically re-jigged Act 2, after Hamlet's sardonic encounter with Jim Norton's Polonius.
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