HAMLET

Directed by Adrian Noble
Royal Shakespeare Company

"Kenneth Branagh comes back to the Royal Shakespeare Company where less than a decade ago we were all hailing him as the brightest new star of the age.

And in doing so with this momentous Hamlet--his third stab at the role if you count the recent radio version--he reclaims the crown I had thought was all but lost.

Those of us who prophesied that he had turned the shining promise of a career into a mass-marketing goldmine are having to digest a slice or two of humble pie.

When last I saw him disguised in the black robes of the Prince of Denmark I could not help but concur with the ghost: 'Oh Hamlet, what a falling off was this.' Now, however, matured both physically and emotionally he is undoubtedly the greatest Hamlet of our time. I have seen none to match him in many a season.

The muffin face of Branagh's youth now has a commanding gravitas. The voice can soar the verse to the heavens or draw us into his innermost thoughts by its quiet confiding. The marvelous set speeches come as newly-invented; the dangerous mood-swings between the wintery grief of his earliest scenes to the tightrope journey he hazards between feigned madness, careful cunning and deeply felt wounds are expertly charted...I cannot recommend its brave authority or emotional dexterity too highly or applaud it too loudly."

--Jack Tinker, Daily Mail (December 27, 1992)

"...Kenneth Branagh gives the finest performance of his career as Hamlet. This actor's greatest strength has always been his manifest humanity, his dogged decency. He lets you into his character's mind with a complete absence of guile and showy flamboyance and at almost every stage you feel you know exactly what he is thinking and what he is feeling. As a result many of the play's difficulties seem to be resolved.

"The soliloquys have a conversational clarity, and there is never any doubt that his "madness" is feigned. Branagh beautifully captures sudden moments of soul-sick sadness, but there is a wonderful warmth and humour here, as well as shafts of cruelty, sardonic wit and emotional violence. Yet even in his darkest moments this Hamlet never forfeits the audience's sympathy.

"...This tough, challenging production certainly isn't for the faint-hearted, but it yields exceptional rewards and will linger resonantly in the memory of all who see it."

--Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph (December 21, 1992)

His performance, though some way short of greatness, is a powerful one. In the first instance he brings to it some basic virtues which perhaps ought to be taken for granted, but which in today's theatre can't be: he speaks clearly, he has a sense of rhythm, he gives his words (or most of them) their proper weight. Beyond that, he frequently penetrates to the emotional core of the part and he invests it with a distinctive personal dynamism.

Sardonic humour, tenderness, grief, self-loathing, affection, and impulsive cruelty are all well within Branagh's range. He is stronger on action than introspection, but he argues his way lucidly though the soliloquies; and he doesn't react against over-romantic interpretations by making Hamlet too much of a Renaissance tough.

If he has a fault, indeed, it is that he is sometimes too tearful: his voice cracks too readily, and once or twice he even bawls like a baby. But he soon recovers himself. He remains a prince, even in his distraction."

--John Gross, Sunday Telegraph (December 27, 1992)

"Some Hamlets are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them. Remarkably, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet falls into all three categories.

The Hamlet which has opened in Stratford, after the benefit of a London run, has had greatness thrust upon it by almost general acclaim. Not his first Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh has now achieved a blissfully communicative clarity in his performances of the enigmatic hero.

Further, Branagh seems born to embody a particularly appealing hero-prince, one forced by circumstance to act against his best human instincts, to forgo everything that makes life sweet, even to lose love as a luxury forbidden to avengers.

The Branagh voice and delivery are perfect for this combat in words, demolishing wordy Polonius, and for stinging his mother with words of reproach, for masking but never concealing his pursuit of Claudius in the menace of his words, and for parodying his love for Ophelia in the words of double entendre. Kenneth Branagh makes most scenes worth listening to, an important gift when you are offering the near-Complete, as opposed to the Concise, Hamlet.

...Branagh is superb in the final scenes of the play, when "the readiness is all."

He elevates "readiness" to a desirable higher order of being, yet one reassuringly possible for us all. A gift most royal, most noble, and most welcome."

--Paul Lapworth, Sun-Herald (March 26, 1993)

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