thu 28/03/2024

Hamlet

The Motive and the Cue, Noel Coward Theatre - National Theatre transfer excels in the West End

Plays about the theatre tend to go down well with audiences. Why wouldn’t they? The danger is that they become too cosy as actors and audience smugly agree on the transcendence of the artform. Jack Thorne’s The Motive and the Cue comes perilously...

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Re-Member Me, Hampstead Theatre review - wittily staged but poignant lip-syncing

Lip-syncing has become the hobby of many a young TikToker, but only an intrepid professional would contemplate using the technique to play Hamlet. Or rather, to “play” some of the knighted thespians and stars who have portrayed him. Dickie Beau is...

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The Motive and the Cue, National Theatre review - theatrical titans face off

Plays about the theatre are many and varied, from Gypsy and Noises Off to the numerous Shakespeare works that absorb theatrical performance into their very fabric.Jack Thorne's The Motive the Cue immediately takes pole position amongst recent...

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Hamlet, Shakespeare's Globe review - melancholy mash-up lacks chemistry

Hamlet isn’t often played for laughs. When David Tennant took the comedic approach in the RSC’s 2008 production, it was testament to his mercurial genius that his performance brilliantly conveyed the manic grief of a young man whose world was...

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Hamlet, Young Vic review - Cush Jumbo flares in a low-key production

It is a truism that every Hamlet is different, depending more than any other play on the casting of the lead. Each production moulds itself around the personality of the actor playing the prince. In Cush Jumbo, working here with Greg Hersov, who...

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Hamlet, Windsor Theatre Royal review - the age is out of joint

So it wasn’t Cinderella but Hamlet who was first out of the post-lockdown starting blocks – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s much trumpeted musical premiere being foiled by a ping at the weekend. Instead the historic first curtain-up was 20 miles up the River...

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'Shakespeare is mistakenly considered something for the elite': director Claire McCarthy on 'Ophelia'

Ophelia is one of Shakespeare's most enduring characters in both literature and art, and yet her part in Hamlet is limited to few lines and fewer motivations. Based on Lisa Klein's novel, the new film Ophelia challenges this interpretation. Daisy...

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As You Like It / Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Globe review - ensemble emphasis sets a leaner style

There’s a distinct feeling of back to basics to this opening double bill at the Globe under the theatre’s new Artistic Director Michelle Terry. The elaborations (some would say gimmickry) of Emma Rice’s short tenure have been reined back, and a new...

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Hamlet, Harold Pinter Theatre review - dislocatingly fresh makeover

Midway through Hamlet a troupe of actors arrives at Elsinore. Coaching them for his own ends, the prince turns director, delivering an impassioned critique: “O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to...

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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic

To the list of abiding theatrical partnerships one must surely add Tom Stoppard and the director David Leveaux. From his Tony-winning revival of The Real Thing onwards to Jumpers and Arcadia, all of which played both London and Broadway, Leveaux has...

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'Hamlet’s actors are kings of infinite space'

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, Were it not that I have bad dreams…” 2016, with all its protectionist voting, has been the year I’ve taken my production of Hamlet – with just six actors, a sofa and a drum...

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Shakespeare triple bill, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Shakespeare has always been a fertile source of inspiration for story ballets. Plays which exist in multiple dance versions include Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet, while Shakespeare...

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