Jacobi has been for a considerable time now that heartening kind of actor who seems incapable of putting a foot wrong, or even a toe. When he takes the stage, one's spirits rally on the instant; the promise is high, and invariably it is fulfilled. Always superlatively good, in "Hamlet" he is at his very best....This is indeed a "Hamlet" to do Britain proud.

Gordon Gow, Plays and Players August 1979

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The period's most regarded Hamlet, on tour and at the Old Vic, was Derek Jacobi. Fourteen years earlier, Jacobi had been in three productions with which the Birmingham Repertory completed its full Shakespeare record; to be cast as Aaron in "Titus Andronicus", Troilus and Henry VIII was variety enough and we did not wonder that he went straight to Olivier's National company at the Vic as Laertes to O'Toole's Hamlet. He was there through Olivier's reign, modest, adaptable, and waiting. When the Prospect "Hamlet" arrived there were the customary and foolish suppositions that Jacobi must have sprung, fully armed, from a television serial; in fact, few men had had a more potent theatre experience. At thirty-eight he was neither an aspiring undergraduate nor a peevish youth fitted better to a street corner than the Danish throne. Logical, graceful, possibly the most touching Hamlet since John Neville, but fortified always by his fiery spirit, he re-charged my faith in the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword. To listen to him was like reading the play in a fresh format.

J.C. Trewin, "Five & Eighty Hamlets"

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Recent performances of the play (including Finney's) have mangled or upstaged its protagonist. This time, Hamlet is undoubtedly back in control. Derek Jacobi restores the figure of the Renaissance prince, apt to break into falsetto hysterics under stress, but equipped with all the courtesy, irony and masterful variations of tempo and weight that traditionally belong to the part. Not vocally over-endowed for heroic acting, he makes much use of the whisper, so that, when they come, his outbursts have the maximum impact....."What a piece of work is a man" now becomes an extract from the book Hamlet was reading in the previous scene. Leaving the graveyard, he makes a snap at Claudius with Yorick's skull....And it is further evidence of Mr. Jacobi's control of the part that he is never overshadowed by Timothy West's Claudius.

Irving Wardle, The London Times: May 31 1977

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Since Irving Wardle reviewed Prospect's production of "Hamlet" several months ago, the play has been seen throughout the Middle East, in a fort in Dubrovnik, at the Edinburgh Festival and throughout Britain. I finally caught up with it on its return to the Old Vic, where all the reports had not prepared me for Toby Robertson's ingenious and convincing approach to its staging.....Mr. Robertson sets the stage with a dumb show before the play begins; Hamlet and Ophelia, Gertrude and Claudius, pass silently, looking into each other's eyes. Then, as the action opens, Ophelia tries to breach protocol and speak to Hamlet, but she is cut off. Hamlet's decision to avenge his father's murder further separates the lovers, and there is no doubt in Suzanne Bertish's playing that they are lovers. Every word they exchange takes on passionate meaning, and their silences are charged with tension. Those silences are clearly and painfully enforced by Claudius' cautious watch on his nephew. When Polonius and Claudius bait their trap for Hamlet, leaving Ophelia alone to be confronted, Hamlet walks in and delivers the "To be or not to be" speech directly to her. When she tries to touch him, he withdraws as though electrically shocked and, in brief, admonishes her to get to a nunnery. For a moment he yields and embraces her passionately, longingly, but then remembers that behind every curtain someone is listening. Derek Jacobi's Hamlet is not free to act, not free to love or speak openly. He is spied upon by Claudius' guards and by his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. His letters to Ophelia are delivered by Polonius straight to Claudius.

From this mass of treachery Mr. Jacobi builds a vigilant Hamlet. He is not restrained by conscience or doubt from killing Claudius and claiming his throne, but the only weapons he is free to use are irony and an aggressive mockery. This Hamlet is passionate, methodical and quick-witted, and might, most unusually among Hamlets, have proved most loyal, had he become king. But there is his passion for Ophelia, and there is no doubt at her graveside that he loved her more than any brother could, and his grief and guilt are the fatal lure to the duel with Laertes. In this believable and powerful interpretation, Mr. Jacobi's memorable Hamlet, physically limber and vocally subtle, is no longer the sole focus of the play. Miss Bertish builds an Ophelia whose passion is overpowering. Not everything in the production rises to the achievement of Miss Bertish and Mr. Jacobi, but what they offer is extraordinary.

Ned Chaillet, The London Times: November 23, 1977

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Prospect's "Hamlet" begun life as an abbreviated version, but now, at three and a half hours, it is stretching out to its full length. It was only a few months ago that I praised this production. There is now a new Ophelia in the person of Jane Wymark and her subdued projection of passion gives another shape to Toby Robertson's production. Using the Old Vic stage mainly in its bareness, with cloth battlements suggesting Elsinore Castle and the same cloth forming tapestried chambers, the emphasis is put on the actions and interactions of the actors. Mr. Jacobi's Hamlet is given to extremes in the presence of watchers, and with all but a few members of court serving the king, he is almost always watched....When Hamlet finally runs a dagger through Polonius behind a curtain, it is far from the first time he has prodded curtains in search of spies. When he drops to his knees in mockery or pain, he is giving a performance within his grief. His rapid changes of mood are predicated as much by his knowledge that everything he says is overheard, as by any assumption of the guise of madness.

Mr. Jacobi is a splendid Hamlet and the production remains, on second viewing, richly rewarding.

Ned Chaillet, The London Times: January 24, 1978

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HAMLET IN DENMARK

Hamlet at Kronborg Castle at Elsinore: it sounds like the perfect conjunction of play and setting. A bit like seeing Macbeth staged at Dunisinane or Romeo and Juliet in a square in Verona. Indeed, I set out last weekend to see Derek Jacobi and the Old Vic company doing the world's most famous play in its natural setting in the spirit of a pilgrim going to Lourdes. I let slip this comparison to a member of the company who said it was all too apt---"In both places you get immersed in water." For the blunt fact is that, from the time I arrived in Elsinore to the moment I left nearly two days later, it scarcely stopped raining. And when it wasn't raining the wind was so fierce one felt like a feather being blown about hither and yon. But I did get to see "Hamlet" at Elsinore. Miraculously the rain stopped five minutes before the play was due to start in the courtyard of Kronborg Castle last Saturday night. Prudent members of the audience wrapped themselves in the large protective polythene sheets with which one is issued as one goes in. A chap sitting next to me generously passed the contents of a hip flask along the row. And when Hamlet's chum entered and was asked "What, is Horatio there?" and replied (wrapping his cloak about him) "A piece of him", a titter ran through the audience. But the first half of the play worked extremely well. It was fascinating to see it played on an open stage with the audience wrapped around the action in an arc of 290 degrees, with a gallery and a curtained chamber at the back of the stage and with occasional entrances through auditorium tunnels. I felt it enabled Mr. Jacobi, in particular, to make unusually close contact with the audience. When he came to the stage's edge and asked "Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across, Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?", it was so direct I was worried lest an aggressive Dane might get up in the third row and say "Well, actually, I do."

It was only after the interval the trouble started. No sooner had Hamlet said "To be or not to be" then the heavens opened. Having watched so many Test Matches on television this summer, I naturally expected the players to run for cover (there was, in fact, a moment when the whole audience rose as one man and swathed itself in sheets, rugs and mackintoshes). But no; on they went, with Mr. Jacobi nearly slipping up on "Get thee to a nunnery," with Jane Wymark's Ophelia bravely playing the mad scene barefoot wearing little but a night shift and with Brenda Bruce's cold-ridden Gertrude sanely choosing a dry spot in which to die. My admiration for the Old Vic company was, by the end of the evening, unbounded.... Although my trip to Elsinore (arranged by Kaleidoscope who will, I trust, pay for my funeral expenses when I expire of pneumonia) was not without hazard, it was in many ways instructive. It reminded me that the open-air Elizabethan audiences must often have watched plays under pretty foul conditions. It convinced me yet again that the wrap-around, open-stage with the audience close in (how else would I have detected Hamlet's final, fond glance at Horatio as a man certain death is near) is more exciting than the proscenium arch. It also persuaded me that the Old Vic may survive as an institution if it can engender the kind of spirit it did amongst this waterlogged company.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: September 1, 1979

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HAMLET IN CHINA

"With all his doubts and indecision, Hamlet is far from an ideal revolutionary hero," observed Toby Robertson, the director. But a Chinese audience earlier this month responded enthusiastically, and knowledgeably, to the premiere performance here of the Old Vic's production about the doleful Danish prince. [The Old Vic is on a nine-performance tour of Peking and Shanghai; the visit here is part of a seven-country itinerary, including Scandinavia and Greece. From here, the troupe heads for Australia.] Although a simultaneous translation into Chinese by local actors was available over earphones, a majority of the spectators were content to listen to the Elizabethan original. "They are a really civilized lot," said Derek Jacobi. Many people in the audience had read "Hamlet" in school or had seen the film version by Laurence Olivier, which was shown in China earlier this year. But the Chinese audiences were clearly unprepared for Jacobi's exuberant, almost uninhibited, style of acting, which is far more naturalistic than that permitted to Chinese actors. Jacobi alternately disconcerted and exhilarated the Chinese with the range of his impassioned interpretation. One moment he shouted, the next he whispered. He delivered one soliloquy lying on the stage. And he embraced his mother the queen in her bedchamber with what seemed like more than a son's affection.

Judging by the rush for the sandy-haired, bearded actor at a cocktail reception afterward, he was a success. Many of the Chinese said they preferred him to the queen, whose hoarse voice and bounteous cleavage was judged insufficiently royal for Chinese taste. Mr. Jacobi and Mr. Robertson were caught off guard by some questions the Chinese put to them. "Why are your costumes so different from those in the Olivier movie version?" several inquired. "They seem to think there is only one 'Hamlet', only one way to do it," said Jacobi. "Now, I suppose we have superseded Olivier." The Chinese were also puzzled by the Old Vic's decision not to use a proscenium curtain. The entire play is performed on a single set representing the dark brown mottled walls of Elsinore, with no curtain. "They asked us, 'Have you stopped using the curtain altogether in the West?'", Mr. Robertson related. "I get the impression they have been cut off so long they want extraordinary generalizations," Mr. Robertson, a tall, jolly man, added. "They want to know exactly how a play is done,...no questions about its content, please."

Fox Butterfield, New York Times: November 25, 1979