Cumberbatch Hamlet thoughts, with surprisingly little Cumberbatch

[tempestsarekind]

Hamlet, Barbican Theatre
Lyndsey Turner, director; Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet
via NT Live
15 October 2015

Okay, so Hamlet.

I don’t want to say that it went downhill for me from the beginning, but…

Comments

[lareinenoire]

I liked Ophelia in general in this production at least in part because there was nothing pretty about her madness (and they didn't make her take off her clothes, THANK GOD), and I totally agree that the end of her second mad scene was very effective. The cuts...I wasn't a fan either, for much the same reasons you weren't. They were...interesting? New? Different? But that's not the same as good. And it shortchanged so many of the other characters, especially Horatio, who was a total wash in this production. The bit at the end where he took Gertrude's line was especially aggravating--WHY would any director do that? I don't even know.

[tempestsarekind]

Yes - Ophelia remained clothed, hurrah! I do prefer it when Ophelia isn't so obviously fragile at the beginning of the play (and there was one minor cut to her part that really frustrated me: in the production she only answers Polonius' "Mad for thy love?" with "My lord, I do not know," so they cut the part where she says "But truly I do fear it" - which is a seemingly small detail, but the original text goes a long way toward establishing that Ophelia has her own thoughts and opinions about what is going on around her and happening to her, even if she can't do anything about those thoughts). But I thought it was an interesting decision to have her repeat lines from earlier in the play, and watching her pick her way haltingly up that mountain of mud almost made the dirt everywhere worthwhile.

I think the director fell into the trap of thinking that only Hamlet matters, really - so who cares if you give Gertrude's last line to Horatio or otherwise mess with character continuity?

[lareinenoire]

There have been so many instances where I've liked interactions between Ophelia and Laertes but not the mad scenes (c.f. the Tennant production, where they were so cute and sweet early on, but the mad scenes really fell flat for me). In this production, I was disappointed that they cut so much of Ophelia's sane scenes--her interactions with Gertrude, especially--but I liked having her repeat lines from earlier in the play as part of her madness. I thought that worked really well. Also the little piano reprise bit from the mad scene really got to me for some reason.

Yeah, I definitely think this production fell into the trap of All About Hamlet, which, if you actually read the text, is not what the play is about.

[tempestsarekind]

I feel the same way about the Tennant production! Edward Bennett and Mariah Gale are just wonderful together as Laertes and Ophelia in their first scene, but somehow that brother-sister closeness doesn't pay off in the mad scenes the way it should