Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:27 pm
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 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