Benedict Cumberbatch delivered a Hamlet for our time in London in a production that played to his strengths, dressed up Shakespeare for a younger crowd and had the British actor’s fans roaring in approval at the end.
Ever since the 12-week run was announced a year ago and sold out in record time for a London stage show, people have been wondering if the production, which officially opened on Tuesday, was going to be a Cumberbatch fest or a serious Hamlet.
The fears can be laid to rest. It is indeed Hamlet, but not in the brooding Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton tradition.
The three-hour-long production directed by Lyndsey Turner at the Barbican Theatre is set for the first half in a palace that looks more like Downton Abbey than Elsinore, while in the second half the same set has been ravaged by war.
In this environment, the 39-year-old British film and television star works some of his most famous roles into the DNA of a very modern prince. At one point he wears a hoodie and for most of the play is dressed like a guy from the ‘hood’ – as are his mates.
Displaying the quick wit and mental acuity of his television detective Sherlock, Hamlet figures out that his uncle Claudius, portrayed by a wonderfully-two-faced Ciaran Hinds of Game of Thrones fame, killed his father, usurped the crown and married his mother (Anastasia Hille).
The prince then does his best to alienate everyone around him, especially the young Ophelia (Sian Brooke), whom he deeply loves, a bit like Cumberbatch’s sociopath mathematician Alan Turing does to his colleagues in The Imitation Game. The production tinkers with the text, but To Be or Not to Be, which in early previews opened the play, has sensibly been restored to its normal spot.
It may not be a Hamlet for the ages, but it is one for now
Other revisions are more subtle, including having Ophelia use some of the dialogue from earlier in the play for the wistful songs she sings just before she drowns herself.
It may not be a Hamlet for the ages, but it is one for now, and for Cumberbatch’s legions of predominantly female fans.
The show received mixed early reviews, with The Times giving it just two stars, branding it ‘Hamlet for kids raised on Moulin Rouge’, while the Daily Mail hailed the performance with a five-star rating.
The Guardian’s Michael Billington called the production an “intellectual ragbag” and awarded only two stars.
Awarding four stars, Dominic Cavendish wrote in the Telegraph that Cumberbatch was “a blazing, five-star Hamlet trapped in a three-star show”.
His performance also won international acclaim, with The New York Times’ Ben Brantley calling the actor “superb”.
The production will be broadcast to cinemas on October 15.