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Something really is rotten in the state of Denmark! The knives are out as Suzy Eddie Izzard's one-person take on Shakespeare's Hamlet is dismissed by critics as a 'vanity project' that 'exposes his acting abilities'
The versatile actor, comedian and activist has embarked on what could arguably be an over-ambitious undertaking at London's Riverside Studios.
Fitting then, that critics are more chilled than charmed by Izzard's latest project, coming as it does shortly after Andrew Scott's one-man rendering of Anton Chekhov's Vanya and Succession star Sarah Snook's solo performance of Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray. 'Izzard’s brother Mark, who has adapted and pruned the text, fatally appears to equate length with boredom and pace with clarity, but I doubt that any spectators not already familiar with Hamlet will emerge from the busy blur of these two hours plus interval much the wiser as to why this is the Mount Everest of canonical plays.' Still, something’s a bit rotten with the state of a production when the soliloquies - sane, sad and sincere though they be, with the odd hint of ham and whiff of James Mason - are less impactful than the incidentals: the funny business with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – conveyed, literally, by bare handiwork – the eerie, chest-thumping account of Ophelia’s sorrowful sing-song, and the grave-digger’s cockney backchat, redolent of Cook and Moore.
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