| Any production of "Hamlet" is only as good as
its Hamlet. By that yardstick, the "Hamlet" we have tonight is
very good indeed--for it is a superlative Hamlet in Derek
Jacobi......The duel in that final scene between Jacobi and young David
Robb as Laertes is as exciting a confrontation as you will see in a
barrelful of television melodramas. When the dying Hamlet in one
terrible, baleful thrust turns on the king and skewers him like a
chicken, it's a scene to chill the blood. Also, Jacobi's Hamlet and the
Ophelia of Lalla Ward have been lovers; this is unmistakable in the
intimate gesture he makes toward her in the "get thee to a
nunnery" scene---and when she draws back nervously, he suspects
someone is watching and begins a quick and thorough search behind drapes
and screens as he talks. For this is no hesitant Hamlet that Jacobi
plays, no Hamlet who could not make up his mind; he's a steely rapier of
a prince, cold, direct, decisive. When he hears old Polonius listening
behind the drapes in his mother's closet, he goes into immediate action
to run the old man through; he fakes the death warrants of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern without a second thought.
Inside the prince, as the soliloquies reveal, Jacobi's Hamlet is a cauldron of intellectual conflict--his soldier's militancy in deadly battle with his student philosophy. Shaw once said that Hamlet, born to military barbarism and heir to a blood feud, was incapable of conventional revenge "because he had evolved into a Christian without knowing it"---and Jacobi's Hamlet, more than any I have seen, seems to bear this out. What he is not is the traditional melancholy Dane. Jacobi, who looms as one of the English-speaking theater's most interesting actors, gives us a Hamlet of great charm and wit, capable of wonderfully funny badinage with the grave digger---changing instantly into deep compassion over the skull of poor Yorick. It's a performance that is varied and inventive and highly intelligent. The stage belongs to Jacobi and, in a performance that grows as he plays it, he's a Hamlet you will not soon forget. The production is the last of Cedric Messina's productions, which PBS, for some reason, chose to show out of the regular sequence as a special offering. But then, very special it is. Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times: November 10, 1980 ____________________________________________________________ Coming to the inevitable challenge of "Hamlet", the BBC has constructed an always solid and often admirable production around a single performance that is never less than superb. In this 3 1/2 hour presentation, Hamlet is played by Derek Jacobi. Mr. Jacobi is no longer a stranger to American audiences. On television he has played brilliantly the leads in "I, Claudius" and "Richard II', as well as the wickedly effete spy Guy Burgess. He is now appearing in "The Suicide" on Broadway. "Hamlet" makes still another outstanding contribution to his credits. This Dane is less melancholy or hesitant than passionate and impetuous. For the most part, the BBC has fastened upon the hypnotic mood of the play, from the opening shadowy scenes with the cry of "Who's there?" to the constant poetic references to fear and wonder, bad dreams, doomsday and diseased wits. Something is indeed rotten in this Denmark....Among this production's more impressive assets is an unusual clarity of exposition. Electronic editing dispenses with those clumsy exits and entrances that handicap stage productions. Television simply goes from one scene to the heart of another. Director Rodney Bennett has also kept the final fencing contest and bloodbath perfectly clear, convincing and mesmerizing. There is no doubt that Mr. Jacobi's performance dominates this production, even to the point of conspicuously overshadowing the other characters. But then this may be an unavoidable aspect of any Hamlet.....But at the crucial center, there is always Mr. Jacobi. His is a Hamlet that demands attention and acclaim. John O'Connor, New York Times: November 10, 1980 ___________________________________________________________
Few actors in the world know Hamlet's state of mind better than Derek Jacobi, the British classical actor who has played the role more than 300 times and who has spent half his life preparing for tonight's performance of "Hamlet", the most prestigious role for an actor this year, and one of the most important television roles of the decade. Americans who were awed by his performance last year in "I, Claudius" are in for a treat. Jacobi is even more impressive tonight in one of the theater's most difficult roles, the Mount Everest of acting, as he calls it. It will be a long time before you will experience acting as rich as Jacobi's Hamlet, on television or anywhere else. "Hamlet" is a standard of what television can achieve and it makes up for a lot of disappointments. When Jacobi says that the role of Hamlet is so varied that one could play it nude on the moon and it would still come through, well, as Ophelia would say, the gentleman protests too much. Jacobi's achievement is to have taken a role with a tradition that dates back centuries in the theater and then adapt it to the television screen without sacrificing the impact, the mystery, the melancholy, or the psychological horror. Students think of Shakespeare as an irrelevant Elizabethan fuddy-duddy who uses funny words, but that is the fault of the teachers, says Jacobi. And those who think Hamlet is insane underestimate the Danish prince, says Jacobi. "He isn't mad at all. He's the sanest man in the court, although he does border on insanity three times---when the ghost departs, when he confronts Ophelia in the nunnery scene, and when he engages in verbal rape with his mother in the closet scene." Jacobi's Hamlet teeters tantalizingly at the edge of madness. We are sure one moment that he is feigning insanity. In the next scene, we are convinced that he is a genuine full-fledged lunatic until, finally, a scene or two later, we begin to suspect that perhaps he is a jump ahead of the rest of the court. Even Hamlet is puzzled, wondering whether what began as a game of pretending insanity has overtaken him, and whether he is or is not about to become truly mad. So watch this if you can. Nothing is good or bad, as Hamlet says, but thinking makes it so. And you will think this performance by Jacobi is outstanding. Jack Thomas, Boston Globe: November 10, 1980
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