Hamlet

«Director Robert Icke, alive to the play’s emotional heft, is certainly not afraid to linger over details, and his production, which has two intervals, weighs in at nearly four hours. But it has an admirable lucidity. Much of the time it feels like a modern and highly charged family drama, steeped in Nordic Noir... Icke’s interpretations of classic plays are unapologetically audacious, yet they have a rigorous logic... rich and beautiful — with Scott delivering a career-defining performance that’s charismatic and surprising.»

«[Scott's] wholly arresting performance is front and center of a production of thrilling intelligence... Scott and Icke not only find tenderness of thought and expression, they open up Hamlet’s moment of death in a way that is utterly unexpected, yet entirely wedded to the text — like this masterly production as a whole.»

«Icke’s slowing down and opening up of the text is genuinely thrilling... He cracks the play open and shines a light inside. He explores the relationships between the characters with intelligence; he even nails the gravedigger scene, and how often can that be said of Hamlet?»

«A radical new version of Shakespeares classic, reworked and directed by Robert Icke, "one of the most important forces in todays theatre»

«So bold it just takes the breath away... Scott is wonderful – but he is the heart of a rich and radical interpretation of the play. Icke has shaped a lengthy – almost four hours – and unusual version of the text, that includes many sections often omitted. But in doing so he casts light on places usually left unexplored, filling out and re-imagining problematic relationships. It never feels a second too long, gripping from start to close.»

«Robert Icke is one of the most important forces in today’s theatre. He blew the dust from Oresteia and made 1984 newly penetrating. Now he and Andrew Scott give us a terrific modern-dress Hamlet. Full of ideas but not manacled to a concept. The originality is a question of pitch and pace and breath. It is as if the lungs of the play are different. Every moment of the text rings with significance.»

«Robert Icke is the king of the high-concept classic... in this production, previously seen at the Almeida, Icke has brought theatrical Ronseal to the rotten state of Denmark. .. a Hamlet with a heart.»