Theatre Trip: Hamlet

Theatre Trip: HAMLET

Saturday 8 July, 7:00

Seat: Stall, C12/13

Notes: Finally, a front row seat! I won these tickets through the TodayTix app. I've been stalking Hamlet on the app since it opened, and there are rush tickets available at 10am every day through the app. But it was hard, and I'd tried about a dozen times with no luck. So when I rolled out of bed yesterday at 10:01, I thought I'd just give it another go. And I won! Front row, centre seats, and at the excellent price of 15 pounds a seat!!!

This was a modernised production in the set and effects, but completely used the original Shakespearean text. I hadn't realised how many of the lines I was familiar with were from Hamlet! The text is of course very wordy, and although it kind of washes over you, and you don't understand all the words, the meaning is still clear and you totally understand what is going on during the plot.

The cast was fantastic! It turns out that I recognised many of the cast, including Daniel Rabin (Reynaldo), David Rintoul (Ghost/Player King), and Peter Wight (Polonius). The former two were in Game of Thrones! All the cast were absolutely great at their intense moments. There were two actors that I was very very keen to see in this play. One was Jessica Brown Findlay, who played Ophelia. She was Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey, and her performance was very nuanced. Her small mannerisms were lovely to watch, and then in Act 2 when she goes mad, she really did a very very convincing job of being mad.

And then there was Andrew Scott. Best known for being Moriarty in Sherlock (and in the most recent Bond movie too!), he played the title role in the play, and he was great! Slightly overwrought at times, but I felt like it fit in with the madness that he suffered from throughout the play. I did really like the emphasis he put in certain places during his monologues, it made me feel like certain parts had a different meaning to what they had before. Really interesting.

After the show we went to stage door. Jessica Brown Findlay came out really early and they got a cheer, but none of them stopped for autographs, which did make me quite sad. Andrew Scott did sign programs though which was awesome - although his handler made us stop taking photos really early, and I had to move to a different spot to actually get an autograph at all! A bit disappointing, but it wasn't Andrew's fault. Just not handled very well.

Overall, this play left me not excited, but a little overwhelmed - in a good way. It was intense and serious, but had it's funny moments. And was very impactful.