"'Hamlet' is one of the Shakespeare plays that most suffers from diminishing returns — adaptations that try too hard to innovate, to render a classic modern and hip. Though Icke’s protracted production occasionally falls into that trap, ultimately the creative team’s visual and technical prowess — along with its provocative young lead — make this a tale of musing, mania and murder for our age."
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"4/5 Stars! With perennial troubled-youth portrayer Alex Lawther as the great Dane, Shakespeare's ghost story becomes an unsettlingly contemporary tale of insurmountable and all-consuming grief... In Lawther's tormented performance, familiar soliloquies take on fresh urgency...Lawther's audacious turn makes up for the production's longueurs."
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"For nearly all of the production’s three hours and 45 minutes, this sort of sound insists on reminding us that 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' hammering a nail that has long since been walloped flush."
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"Ultimately the effectiveness of any 'Hamlet' must reside with the actor playing the title role, and here the results are mixed. As noted, Mr. Lawther’s Hamlet is an antic brat in the early acts, and his recital of the verse largely fails to transmit its lyrical beauty. But by the end of the play, notably in the graveside scene, Hamlet seems to have grown before our eyes to emotional and intellectual maturity."
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"Lucid interpretations of the text and committed performances support a strong directorial vision, which situates itself at the newsworthy intersection of mental health and firearms. Icke's Hamlet would seem to have everything going for it — so why does it feel like such a slog?"
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This is an up-to-the-minute Hamlet, cool to the touch but roiling with powerful emotions hidden behind an engineered façade of propriety.
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"This is a production that mixes art with artifice, with an overlay of quirky design elements that, even when they clash with the onstage action, rarely fail to engage."
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"To be or not to be an exhilarating, respectful Hamlet, that’s the question improperly answered through the tragedy’s reappearance. “Remember me,” the Ghost exhorts. Not this time."
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