I saw this last night. I liked it well enough, but it left me wanting to see Janet McTeer in Hamlet instead of this. It felt, cynically, like the play was a way of letting casual audiences get a taste of Hamlet without making them sit through the whole thing.
I was never bored during the play -- it just did not feel substantial. And I did not understand why the play took a left turn to focus on a completely different play at the end of the second act. It weighed things down, and it also meant that, bafflingly, we never got the payoff of seeing McTeer do Hamlet (?!) because the focus shifts to this other play instead. It would have been so easy to conclude the play with a monologue from Hamlet on opening night. But Rebeck seems to like to leave things unfinished. Scenes frequently just end without resolving -- and the play does too.
It makes it sound like I did not enjoy the play, but it is actually a great production. The performances are good, the sets are astounding, and the play itself is diverting enough in the moment. It just could have been so much more.
(That said, I liked it way more than Straight White Men, which I saw earlier this week, and the less said about the better.) |
