Reviews About Hamlet (DVD)

The review about this product

Hamlet - The Film starring Will Houston (DVD) This is a quite competent, traditional 20th C. interpretation of the play with a cast of trained pros (a serious student of Shakespeare shouldn't care that they aren't movie stars or Doctor Whos).

It was staged for film: that's a good thing, as it isn't simply a part-film/part-stage production like many higher-profile Hamlets. A few nice outdoor scenes add verve. Houston is deeply invested as H. without overplaying it; in fact, with the perhaps inevitable exception of Laertes, there's very little scene-chewing, yet the film never feels leaden (considerable cuts help with that, of course, and I am usually into uncut work but on film it's hard to avoid). Gertrude and Claudius are steady forces of authority and the former gets the bedroom scene exactly to my taste; it's emotionally raw, but there's no showoffy sexing-up here (which means it could be played for a classroom of younger students). Polonius is not played for extreme laughs as many players since Cronyn have done; really, this may be the most "experimental" thing about the production in this day and age.

P.S. To the previous reviewer: the costumes were on loan from the RSC. Check the credits. One early establishing shot may have been of a Ren Faire or living history museum, but even if so, that is hardly an unwise use of their obviously small budget.