Hamlet - Reprise

Last August, after waiting an entire year to see Benedict Cumberbatch play Hamlet, I wrote a fairly disgruntled review of the show.  It was entirely not what I expected and no where near as good at the Royal Shakespeare production.  Also, Benedict let me down so I was less than thrilled with my 3 hours at the Barbican.

As we learned at the time, we were seeing it in Previews so things weren't quite as they turned out to be by the end of the run.  But nonetheless, not fabulous.  However, through the glory of technology, we managed to score 2 tickets to tonight's National Theatre Live production in a nearby movie theater.  This would allow us to see the non-preview full production.  They had surely changed things around by the end of the run, so it was most definitely going to be better, right?

Wrong!  It's still terrible.  So terrible in fact, we left at the interval (which lasts the full 20 minutes, just like a live production.)

The one thing that absolutely killed me the first time was their move of "To be or not to be..." to the very first scene of the show - in theory, to give the Benedict fan-girls what they came for immediately as the curtain came up.  After this caused an uproar with the critics, they moved it to its rightful place in the show, as we saw it this evening.  However, they still gave Benedict the very first lines - lines that aren't his! Hamlet's not even supposed to be on stage for another scene.  Really people?  You don't think the theater goers could wait 10 minutes to see him?

Other than that change, everything else stayed pretty much the same - too big, and too weird, which is why I just wasn't a fan.  Hamlet is supposed to be about the words and about the feelings.  In this production, Hamlet gets lost amongst the crazy set pieces and strange costuming.  Benedict Cumberbatch is a fabulous actor and he still is in this production.  But he does go a little too manic from time to time.  Hamlet's slow descent is more of a cliff-dive this time around.

And I think because Benedict is so good, I realized, this time around, that some of the rest of the cast - primarily Claudius - just weren't that fantastic in their roles.  You're either a Shakespearean actor or your not. Some of these actors were definitely not.

In the end, it turns out that shows that aren't great live, will probably still not be great on screen.  Which is a terrible shame, because with an awesome actor like Cumberbatch, it should have been off the charts fabulous.  I think in another smaller production, he could have been amazing!  It just stinks we'll never get to see it.