Hamlet

Eddie Izzard’s one-man Hamlet deserves top marks

8 June 2024 9:00 am

Every Hamlet is a failure. It always feels that way because playgoers tend to compare what they’re seeing with a…

Hamlet fans will love this: Re-Member Me, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

10 June 2023 9:00 am

A puzzle at Hampstead Theatre. Literally, a brain teaser. Its new production, Re-member Me, is a one-man show written and…

The Dane gets an interpretive dance makeover: Ian McKellan's Hamlet reviewed

13 August 2022 9:00 am

Ian McKellen’s Hamlet is the highlight of Edinburgh’s opening week. In this experimental ballet, Sir Ian speaks roughly 5 per…

All a bit Blackadder: Hamlet, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, reviewed

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Never Not Once has a cold and forbidding title but it starts as an amusing tale set in an LA…

A triumph: Young Vic's Hamlet reviewed

16 October 2021 9:00 am

Here goes. The Young Vic’s Hamlet, directed by Greg Hersov, is a triumph. This is a pared-back, plain-speaking version done…

Ian McKellen is riveting: Hamlet, at Theatre Royal Windsor, reviewed

7 August 2021 9:00 am

Ian McKellen in his early eighties plays the Dane in his mid-twenties. A production with such a strange innovation should…

insects

Insects of the hour

20 June 2020 4:20 am

Did you go to college? If so, then it is overwhelmingly likely that you have been the recipient of a…

Michelle Terry as Hamlet and Catrin Aaron as Horatio at Shakespeare's Globe. (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

No one but Michelle Terry would have hired Michelle Terry to play Hamlet

2 June 2018 9:00 am

Regime change at the Globe. The new boss, Michelle Terry, wants a 50/50 ratio of males to females in each…

Worse for wear: Kevin McNally as Lear and Burt Caesar as Gloucester in King Lear

Keeping it in the family

9 September 2017 9:00 am

A new orthodoxy governs the casting process in Hollywood. An actor’s ethnicity must match the character’s. If you extend this…

Sneers and jeers over Lears

28 May 2016 9:00 am

In the 18th century, as Shakespeare began to take on classic status, editors began to notice differences between the texts…

The interior of the Swan Theatre, Southwark, in 1596, based on a sketch by a Dutch traveller, Johannes de Witt, and probably the best indicator of what the Globe Theatre would have looked like.

William Shakespeare: all things to all men

23 April 2016 9:00 am

The best new books celebrating Shakespeare’s centenary are full of enthusiasm and insight — but none plucks out the heart of his mystery, says Daniel Swift

Going Dutch: Eelco Smits and Janni Goslinga of Toneelgroep Amsterdam in ‘Kings of War’

This year's must-see Shakespeare? Four hours of history in Dutch

23 April 2016 9:00 am

James Woodall talks to the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, who has brought a swathe of Shakespeare’s history plays to the stage in Dutch (four hours of it)

The Heckler: the Shakespeare anniversary has stripped the Bard of his beauty

23 April 2016 9:00 am

The feeding frenzy over the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death has reached its peak. Recently we’ve had Shakespeare’s complete…

‘Macbeth, Banquo and Witches on the Heath’, 1794, by Henry Fuseli

Why do some museums insist on playing piped music into exhibitions?

9 April 2016 9:00 am

There was a genteel brouhaha last year — leaders in the Times, letters to the Telegraph, tutting in the galleries…

The Archers v the cricket: which was the more dramatic?

9 April 2016 9:00 am

It was a toss-up on Sunday between the atmosphere in the Radio Five Live Sports Extra studio in Kolkata for…

Smartphones for Hamlet and Heathcliff

2 January 2016 9:00 am

Medea says ‘hiiiiiiii’ on the first page of Mallory Ortberg’s hilarious book, which puts smartphones in the hands of literary…

Mr Nice Guy: Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is far too nice

12 September 2015 9:00 am

You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…

Paul Johnson’s diary: Boris would make a great PM – but he must strike now

10 May 2014 9:00 am

I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…

Radio that makes you feel the wind on your cheek

5 April 2014 9:00 am

After a walk in Richmond Park beset by rush-hour traffic, the Heathrow flight path and a strange swarm of flying…

Michael Craig-Martin pokes a giant yellow pitchfork at the ordinary

5 April 2014 9:00 am

Visitors to Chatsworth House this spring might wonder if they have stumbled through the looking-glass. The estate’s rolling parkland has…