It was even better the second time around! Benedict's acting seemed to be even more electric this time...perhaps because it was a Friday night and he knew he had some mates in the audience (like James Rhodes). Apparently, there was a private party afterwards, which was why he only signed for ten minutes.

Btw I knew his uniform reminded me of something... 


This is my great grandfather in uniform... he was a royal guard for the then Danish king. 
https://instagram.com/p/7h6jr4nuVc/?taken-by=kittenskittyears 


 

Great photo, Phantom.

This is a bit OT, but I've noticed an ad at the top of the page when I visit this forum, it looks like this:

I'm not sure if anyone outside of Australia is getting this particular ad. Bell Shakespeare is an Australian theatre company that obviously specialises in Shakespeare's plays. Anyway, don't you think this ad looks heavily inspired by the Barbican's Hamlet poster?

I can see the inspiration there! 

ukaunz wrote:

James Rhodes tweeted that he went to see Hamlet again last night. I'm so jealous that people are seeing it live on stage more than once! I hate having to wait until November to see it on screen

 
I share your pain.  But at least we do get to see Benedict's performance.  I am so greatful National Theater Live exsists.

Yitzock wrote:

My god you must live comfortably...just teasing I'm just amazed at how many times you're going to see the show.  I don't know how you could manage to do that, but of course I have nothing against you doing that.  The fact that you want to see it over and over means that it must be good.

Haha, well, most of my tickets cost only £10 so it's not too bad. I queue up overnight for the £10 day tickets.

If I lived closer I'd be queing up constantly too! But I'm happy I got the chance to see it at all, it's addicting though! I was so sad I had to go home the day after, if not I would have tried to get hold of the £10 ticket next day... but oh well. I'm seeing it in the cinema in November. 

Enjoy it! And I'll cross my fingers you manage to get an autograph! 
I didn't... but because of my anxiety and my bleeding foot I didn't try either... also, I don't think he gave them at the time... oh well. But I'm happy for anyone who do get one

Indeed he did! xD 

Went to see it Friday last with two friends in the Sherlock fandom. Here are my thoughts (in case anyone is interested):

So, after spending a ridiculous amount of money, my firend spending a day of her life chained to her computer to book us the tickets and after waiting patiently for more than a year the three of us finally met last Friday to watch the fastest-selling theatre show in the history of English theatre. Was it worth the time and effort?

Yes, obviously for my friiends are lovely and I’m so happy to have met them at last. 

And yes, obviously for we got to see Mr Cumberbatch in the flesh and listen to his voice for real. 

We’d devoted a lot of thought and deliberation upon the choice of our seats and  we had marvellous seats smack bang in the middle. Upon consideration we wouldn't have minded being a bit closer to the stage for the front seats weren’t that low but we had an excellent overall view. 

Benedict Cumberbatch riveted us with a five star performance. He commanded the stage with his energy and his noble demeanour, worthy of a Prince of Denmark. His beautifully deep voice rang around the theatre. The man uses his whole body to act, not just that wonderfully expressive face with that mobile mouth, but every muscle he possesses. His hands are quite large and yet so shapely ( they remind me of Albrecht Dürer's beautiful praying hands) and he uses them to express grief, anger, tenderness, feign madness, they move about a lot and yet can be beautifully quiet as well.
His sheer grace is a marvel to behold. He has the beauty and suppleness of a panther. What a riveting creature he is. His whole performance was one incredible feat of athletics. He is passionate in his grief, terrifying in his anger, engagingly humorous in his madness. He has such great comic timing, and his grief over his father's untimely death and his mother marrying so quickly after was intensely moving. What an actor!!!!

Sadly I think Sonia Friedman Productions has done him a very bad deal in every possible way. The programme boasted the feats of that house, the director and the set designer but really I think they’ll find themselves out of work after this show has ended and justly so.

Unless their object was to show Benedict Cumberbatch can shine and outact the heavens themselves while simultaneously fighting an uphill battle against an overpowering stage set that tries to steal the show and a director who obviously has no idea what the play is actually about. If that was indeed their aim they’ve succeeded admirably.

I’ll deal with Mrs Lyndsey Turner’s directing first. She cut a lot in the text and moved scenes about. Which can be fine, I've had the pleasure once of watching and greatly admiring a radically overhauled Richard III and it was thrilling, a great descent into a hell ruled by the lust for power. My favourite film remains William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Abhorred by Shakespeare purists for Baz Luhrmann has cut over half the lines and radically changed the ending but yet I love it to distraction because ‘it works’ and beautifully conveys the tender love and passion of the young people and their defiance of the laws ruling their society. Shakespeare’s language is universal, still speaking strongly to us over the ages. The plays are so strong in themselves that they simply implore to be interpreted by a director. If, however, the interpretation is "I simply haven’t the faintest" perhaps they shouldn't have accepted the job. Like the Emperor with his new clothes Lyndsey Turner tried to hide the fact she wasn’t up to the job behind a lot of chopping up scenes and moving scenes about. As if she’d know better than Shakespeare himself who apparently wasn’t half bad at putting together a play. The resulting mishmash of badly thought through attempts at hiding a lack of true affinity with the play created a quagmire in which the company couldn’t but flounder.

It is a work about the mind, isn’t it? And about passion. Hamlet’s passionate grief for his father, his passionate wish for revenge, all inspired by that illicit passion that sprang up between his uncle and his mother, begun perhaps even before King Hamlet was murdered.
I’ve never seen a couple about to be married who were less interested in each other. They should be gobbling up each other with their eyes at the wedding banquet, not the food on their plates. Thus Hamlet’s deeply moving plea to his mother to deny Claudius access to her bed loses its impact for one can’t imagine her desperate to receive her husband nor for said husband to want to bed such an icy wife. I can’t hold the actors responsible for their dismal performance though. For it was obvious all the stage directions the actors had got was to play with stage props that were supposed to tell something about them but instead distracted from their roles. And not everyone can be in the same league as Benedict Cumberbatch.

Es Devlin’s stage set was fine for opera I think, to give the eye something to admire while the ears are drowned in auditory bliss. That made it wholly unsuitable for a play where the setting should help the actors do their stuff, not render it impossible by being too big and overpowering and rendering any attempt at intimacy nil and void. I realise here in Holland we have by now a tradition of very lean stage settings and we make use quite a lot of video which, when done well, heightens the experience. This Cumberperson wouldn’t have minded at all if they’d used video to have Hamlet quote the letter in which he announces his return to Denmark or used video for the staged play that's to prove Claudius's guilt to Horatio. Now, with both the King and Queen seated with their backs to the audience we didn’t have a chance to watch the guilt revealing itself on their face.

I wonder what Benedict Cumberbatch is thinking now. Whether he's unhappy about the way this turned out. I can’t but imagine he must be. Frankenstein was so incredible, it was everything theatre should be with the actors supporting each other and a director who knew what he was doing and allowing his stars to shine. That Benedict Cumberbatch managed to outshine all the others, well...

Here it's the other way round. I think both the director and the stage designer badly mistook their role. Excuse me but I didn’t rake out that much cash to see their work but Benedict Cumberbatch. His was the name that sold out the theatre. I suppose Benedict Cumberbatch must have seen at some point, perhaps quite early on, that the enterprise was going to deteriorate into something quite different from what he hoped, but he strikes me as a very naive person who wants to be kind always first and foremost. He should have put down his foot and demanded another director and set designer. Any other star would have. Airs and graces, perhaps, which I think is not his thing at all, but in this instance he would have done himself, his fellow-actors and us, the audience, a good turn if he’d given in to them. 

So, let’s hope Mummy will turn absolutely monstrous on Mr Cumberbatch’s behalf and fire his agent and give Sonia Friedman Productions, Lyndsey Turner and Es Devlin a piece of her mind. I, together with a whole load of others will happily cheer her on.

And yet, despite these disappointments I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. When next Benedict Cumberbatch embarks on a tour of the theatre I’ll go to the same length to secure me a seat. In the front row. 

Thank you, Mr Cumberbatch, for giving your best against all the odds and riveting us with a marvellous, marvellous feat of acting. 

Last edited by dioscureantwins (September 16, 2015 6:57 pm)

Wonderful review, dioscureantwins! Thanks for sharing.