Michael Feingold's review in the Village Voice has one of the most scathing comments I've ever read:
Jude Law is an exciting and valuable actor. He brings a tremendous vital energy to the role of Hamlet, his choppy speech rhythms engaging in what sometimes seems like hand-to-hand combat with Shakespeare's metrics. He seems to be fighting, too, both the prince's melancholy and the sardonic humor with which Hamlet keeps trying to distance himself from events: Law brushes off the former impatiently, and often turns the latter into a belly laugh or an explosion of outrage.
In a real production, he could be one of the great Hamlets, but the sorry news is that Michael Grandage's dismaying, affectless plod-through, which features the dullest supporting cast I have ever seen in any Broadway production of anything, has no more to do with Shakespeare's Hamlet than a paint-by-numbers kit has to do with Rembrandt. I doubt that Grandage meant to evoke the rotten bygone days when stars like Edmund Kean toured England, doing their star thing while some ill-prepared local stock company tromped through its provincial notion of the standard "business," but that's exactly what his results look like.
Edited By Damien on 1255044498
Jude Law as Hamlet
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Cinemanolis
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I saw this in London. Jude Law was very good but the supporting cast was mediocre. The most interesting and important thing for me was the last sentence in Reza's post.
And indeed it was very exciting to see the mostly young people in the audience who normally would never attend a Shakespeare production, enjoying it. It may not be an artistically important production, but at least it is a very good "commercial" production, that has it's leading man as it's main attraction. And Jude does sell this well.
Edited By Cinemanolis on 1254991434
Reza wrote:Noted The New York Times : "Mr. Law's undeniable charisma and gender-crossing sex appeal may captivate Broadway theatergoers who wouldn't normally attend productions of Shakespeare."
And indeed it was very exciting to see the mostly young people in the audience who normally would never attend a Shakespeare production, enjoying it. It may not be an artistically important production, but at least it is a very good "commercial" production, that has it's leading man as it's main attraction. And Jude does sell this well.
Edited By Cinemanolis on 1254991434
Jude Law's Hamlet Gets Mixed Reviews
By Michael Y. Park
To be, or not to be … a hit on Broadway?
That is the question Wednesday morning as the reviews come in for Jude Law 's turn as Hamlet in the much-anticipated Broadway turn for the production, which originated in London to acclaim and opened at New York's Broadhurst Theatre Tuesday night. Reaction is decidedly mixed.
"If Hamlet talks about his mind, you can bet that Mr. Law will point to his forehead; when he mentions the heavens, his arm shoots straight up; and when the guy says his gorge rises, rest assured that he clutches at his stomach. If every actor were like Mr. Law, signed performances for the hard of hearing would be unnecessary," snipes Ben Brantley of The New York Times .
"If anything, Law starts out too overwrought, moaning and gnawing through the great soliloquies as if they were causing him intestinal distress," Time Out New York 's David Cote notes.
Others put in much kinder terms.
"His Hamlet is no brooding philosopher/prince; he's an angry young man, a bundle of nerves forever threatening to explode," raves USA Today 's Elyse Gardner , who considers Law's soliloquies "both muscular and exquisitely lyrical."
Poetry, No; Pretty, Yes
The traditionally acerbic John Simon of Bloomberg News, however, found nothing poetic about Law's "flashy, frequently jocular and unsubtle" performance in a play "aimed at neophyte audiences lured to the play not only by the star but with the added promise of a thriller liberally sprinkled with yocks."
Time Out New York , which generally lauded Law, was one of many that had a bone to pick with the supporting cast, finding Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Ophelia ho-hum, and Geraldine James and Ian Drysdale's Gertrude and Claudius an example of actors taking the phrase "the banality of evil" too literally.
Then thank God Jude's pretty, all critics agreed.
Noted The New York Times : "Mr. Law's undeniable charisma and gender-crossing sex appeal may captivate Broadway theatergoers who wouldn't normally attend productions of Shakespeare."
By Michael Y. Park
To be, or not to be … a hit on Broadway?
That is the question Wednesday morning as the reviews come in for Jude Law 's turn as Hamlet in the much-anticipated Broadway turn for the production, which originated in London to acclaim and opened at New York's Broadhurst Theatre Tuesday night. Reaction is decidedly mixed.
"If Hamlet talks about his mind, you can bet that Mr. Law will point to his forehead; when he mentions the heavens, his arm shoots straight up; and when the guy says his gorge rises, rest assured that he clutches at his stomach. If every actor were like Mr. Law, signed performances for the hard of hearing would be unnecessary," snipes Ben Brantley of The New York Times .
"If anything, Law starts out too overwrought, moaning and gnawing through the great soliloquies as if they were causing him intestinal distress," Time Out New York 's David Cote notes.
Others put in much kinder terms.
"His Hamlet is no brooding philosopher/prince; he's an angry young man, a bundle of nerves forever threatening to explode," raves USA Today 's Elyse Gardner , who considers Law's soliloquies "both muscular and exquisitely lyrical."
Poetry, No; Pretty, Yes
The traditionally acerbic John Simon of Bloomberg News, however, found nothing poetic about Law's "flashy, frequently jocular and unsubtle" performance in a play "aimed at neophyte audiences lured to the play not only by the star but with the added promise of a thriller liberally sprinkled with yocks."
Time Out New York , which generally lauded Law, was one of many that had a bone to pick with the supporting cast, finding Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Ophelia ho-hum, and Geraldine James and Ian Drysdale's Gertrude and Claudius an example of actors taking the phrase "the banality of evil" too literally.
Then thank God Jude's pretty, all critics agreed.
Noted The New York Times : "Mr. Law's undeniable charisma and gender-crossing sex appeal may captivate Broadway theatergoers who wouldn't normally attend productions of Shakespeare."