Hamlet - Tom Hiddleston, Kenneth Branagh, RADA fundraiser

I don't like to sound like a narcissist, but probably because they noticed my previous method of circumventing the paywall so reconfigured the website. I'm not looking forward to having to find yet another method when they realise this loophole exists.

You know what, I hadn't realised it was as cheap as £3.97 a month for full web access to articles, so maybe I will next time they publish something I'd be interested in reading.

The Stage has something for everyone - loads of intelligent, informed and sharp Features and Opinions from Lyn Gardner and many others. And, for the more woolly-headed reader, Mark Shenton regularly recycles his theatrical preoccupations - Today is Toilet Day.

I saw the matinee today. I really enjoyed it. I've not been there before and I liked the space. In short:

I actually liked Hamlet himself! So often I find him quite whiny and like an overgrown teenager. Here, he seemed perfectly reasonable. (And not mad.) And I very much liked the way they handled 'get thee to a nunnery' which is normally a bit of a sticking point for me.
The whole thing is frequently very funny.
The gravedigger is great and works really well.
The torchlight graveside scene is beautiful, and makes really effective use of the space, and was a real highlight.
Those seats are bloody uncomfortable after a while.
They are not messing about on the ticket security front.

To be fair, who is?

I mean . . . 



I need a lie down.

In the same way reviewers have a good chance to get tickets if their newspaper makes everybody enter the draw and take the critic as their +1 if successful, imagine how many people might be acquaintances of celebrities who would invite them as their +1 for the chance to spend time with said celebrity.

And then have a long rant against privilege, no doubt.

Actually kathryn, digressing a little from Hiddles, did you see Oscar in 'Hamlet'? How was it?

The short version: Oscar Isaac I thought definitely had taken the right approach to Hamlet, and speaks the verse well, but he didn't quite reach the heights of Andrew Scott or Ben Whishaw. Hard to pin down why - perhaps the Brechtian approach just hindered sincerity and spontaneity, leaving a slightly studied air to his performance. His singing was lovely though, and he was sans trousers for half the show - plus he sat directly in the audience at one point. I was slightly annoyed by the blocking as I spent a lot of time looking st the back of his head even though I was in the central stalls!

Sadly not! He asked an audience member in the front row to move so he could sit in their seat for the beginning of the gravedigger scene, while Horatio perched on the arm of the aisle seat in the row behind. Sad to report that his back-of-head acting is not up to the standard of Simon Russell Beale.

Lovely stuff!

LOL. I think they are aiming for a *slightly* more highbrow tone than that....