Benedict Cumberbatch is a great Hamlet: Mother

Benedict Cumberbatch is a “bloody good Hamlet“, his mum has said. But London’s latest stage sensation is more than a Shakespearean star vehicle.

When asked last night (25.08.15) what she thought of Benedict’s performance, she said: “a bloody good Hamlet“. It’s mounted at the Barbican Theatre on a vast set of crumbling opulence by Es Devlin, who has designed stadium shows for the likes of U2, Kanye West and Lady Gaga.

Cumberbatch’s Sherlock co-star Mark Gatiss said that he was “magnificent”. “Extraordinarily proud. He was quite lively growing up but I thought that was phenomenal”, she told reporters after the play. The production has a cinematic scope, using freeze-frame moments and stylized movement to underscore the drama – or, some felt, undermine it.

He wrote: “He is, in truth, a blazing, five-star Hamlet trapped in a middling, three-star show”.

The Guardian’s Michael Billington has only given two stars for its ‘frustrating and dismal production’. “Gaudy and commercial as this production is, there’s still plenty to praise”, Maltby writes.

“This production knows Cumberbatch’s star is going to draw people unfamiliar with Shakespeare, so the staging is broad and unsubtle; it doesn’t bring anything drastically new or profound to the material”. The play’s three-month run sold out quicker than any show in West End history.

Outside, fans form snaking lines at the stage door each night. Now the official reviews are out, and they’re no less mixed.

Most critics have agreed that numerous stylistic flourishes detract from the impact of the play.

“It is a performance full of good touches and quietly affecting in Hamlet’s final, stoical acceptance of death”.

Reviewers praised the star’s subtle handling of the soliloquies – including the nearly too-famous “To be or not to be” speech – in which the prevaricating prince mulls revenge for the murder of his father.

The vague sense of deflation owes little to Turner’s immensely capable leading man, whose articulation is as expert as a level of engagement with the text that at times put me in mind of Daniel Day-Lewis’s approach to this same role a quarter-century ago but without the level of danger – psychic cost incurred, shall we say, to the performer – that led Day-Lewis famously to depart that production, since which time he’s not stepped back on any stage.

“The pity of it is that Cumberbatch could have been a first-rate Hamlet”.

Benedict Cumberbatch performs as Hamlet at the Barbican in London.