The Shakespeare Post

David Tennant as Hamlet Photography by Ellie Kurttz

August 6, 2008

Playing Hamlet is usually a milestone in any actor’s career. But the bar was set unusually high for David Tennant in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production. The British media has been buzzing about the play for months. Tickets for the Stratford-upon-Avon run are sold out and tickets for the London performances in December are already selling for £500 a pair on EBay. But Tennant’s fans can rest easy. According to most British theatre critics, he’s a success and the play is getting warm if not perfect reviews.

Benedict Nightingale of The Times gives the production four out five stars, writing, “Gregory Doran’s fluent, pacey, modern-dress revival of Hamlet gives Tennant the chance to show the world that he has the range to tackle the most demanding classical role of all - and, praise be, he seizes it. I’ve seen bolder Hamlets and more moving Hamlets, but few who kept me so riveted throughout.” (Read the Times review)

Caroline Briggs of the BBC writes of Tennant, “Overall, his performance is undoubtedly mesmerising. What he lacks in emotional intensity, he makes up for with wit, humour and stirring energy. Tennant is at his best, though, when he allow his full dramatic force to take over. The scene in Gertrude’s bedroom when he challenges her on her “incestuous” bed is menacingly powerful.” (Read the BBC review)

Noting that, “It’s a joy to see Stratford’s vast Courtyard Theatre packed to the rafters and liberally sprinkled with children who remain rapt throughout,” Paul Taylor of The Independent, writes, “Tennant is adept at most aspects of the role but he excels when the prince becomes a prankish provocateur.” He call Tennant, “A lanky live wire with a wry twist to the mouth and mocking brows, he puts on a thrillingly risky display of barbed levity and flippant sarcasm.” Taylor adds, “I rate Tennant very highly, but I wouldn’t put him in the absolute front rank of contemporary Hamlets, …or not yet, at any rate. The performance has time to grow.” (Read the Independent review)

Michael Billington of The Guardian gives the production four out of five stars. He writes, “This is a Hamlet of quicksilver intelligence, mimetic vigour and wild humour: one of the funniest I’ve ever seen…. Tennant is an active, athletic, immensely engaging Hamlet. If there is any quality I miss, it is the character’s philosophical nature,” (Read the Guardian review)

Nicholas de Jongh of the Evening Standard says Tennant doesn’t match the great Hamlets of Mark Rylance, Simon Russell Beale and Ben Whishaw. But he does say that, “Although this Prince of Denmark will not make the angels weep, Tennant still achieves something sensational and never managed in the past 40 years. He unlocks the key to the mystery of Hamlet and offers a convincing explanation for the prince’s famous delay in avenging his father’s murder.” (Read the Evening Standard review)

Writing for the Telegraph, Charles Spencer says, “Tennant isn’t in the pantheon of the great Hamlets yet…What’s lacking, at present, is weight and depth. He delivers the great soliloquies with clarity, but he doesn’t always discover their freight of emotion. But he adds, “There remains much to admire. It’s hard not to warm to a Hamlet who makes you laugh, and Tennant discovers almost every ounce of sarky humour, especially when baiting Oliver Ford Davies’s hilariously ponderous but poisonous Polonius and winding up the smarmy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.” (Read the Telegraph review)

But not all of the critics liked Tennant’s portrayal of Hamlet.

Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail says that Tennant was upstaged by a “deliciously subtle” performance from Stewart. Paul Callan of the Daily Express gave the production three stars, calling it “disappointing.” He writes that Tennant played his Hamlet, “Somewhere between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Goon Show,” and relied too much on “quirkiness, pulling faces and various funny voices,” to reflect Hamlet’s descent into madness. (The Daily Mail and Daily Express reviews were not available online as of this posting.)

Diane Parkes of the Birmingham Mail writes, “For a seasoned Shakespearean who is on his third season with the RSC, Tennant’s clipped delivery of some of the greatest lines written in the English language is a disappointment. Interestingly Tennant is much more comfortable with the crazed Hamlet than his introspective side and, as he leaps around the stage like a drug-fuelled monkey bewildering all who know him, he does warm to the role.” (Read the Birmingham Mail review)

Watch and listen to the latest BBC reports on the RSC’s production of Hamlet
Multimedia