Hamlet (Black Theatre Live)

Most of the pauses came from this large, lumbering chap playing Hamlet. And when I say pauses, I mean pauses in the middle of lines, which disrupts the Iambic Pentameter.

Initially I thought he was downplaying the role, but when Hamlet disappears during the second half you really notice the pacing speed up.

The acting is mixed. The best were Laertes, Horatio and Claudius

The Polonius chap was certainly giving it all he got but soon he kept forgetting lines. And it was unfortunate that it was a captioned night because the audience could see his every mistake.

And he was hamming up the gravedigger to the point that he chucked a skull out of the grave (which was a box in the middle of the stage) so hard that it rolled off the stage. When the funeral procession was coming what could have been a sombre moment was disrupted by him going over to where the skull rolled off and said out loud to an audience member to give it to him.

Gertrude was fine but her delivery of "There is a willow grows aslant a brook" monologue was barely audible.

For her madness scene they had Ophelia dress up as Marilyn Monroe and some other celebrity, half singing all her lines. Didn't add anything insightful to the production

Rosencrantz (no Guildernstern here) looked bored the whole time. So wooden.

There were some odd cuts and alterations. The beginning was very weird, with cast members moving this tomb from the centre to the side, then a projection of Claudius speaking his first lines against images of Britain (?), then some bell tolling before it was replaced by weird supernatural sounds.

The guards are taken out (this is a small cast after all). Instead Horatio wonders on asking "who's there" to which the ghost walks on. I assume the production was trying to suggest that he heard the aforementioned supernatural sounds so he came in to check it out. The lines he says to the guards after the ghost disappears are put together as a monologue he delivers to the audience.

Later on when Horatio tells Hamlet about the ghost he stays on when Hamlet says "My father’s spirit in arms. All is not well" lines, which is weird watching him address these inner thoughts to Horatio. This is only done so that they go straight into the ghost appearing there and then (even though I'm sure I heard them agree to meet later that night)