To speak now or not to speak until later, that is the question facing Benedict Cumberbatch…
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue,” Hamlet tells the players. When Hamlet is Benedict Cumberbatch, you can assume his speeches are indeed mellifluous, which explains why the current West End production of the Bard’s most famous play is sold out. Tickets sold out in minutes. The event — and it really is an event, with a plea by its star not to film him, and scores of Cumberbitches standing at the stage door ready to mow the actor down — has received mixed reviews, but what really got critics upset was director Lynsey Turner’s decision to move its most famous soliloquy to the beginning of the play.
Hamlet’s existential “To be or not to be” speech happens in ACT III but Turner made the decision to move it to the front of the play. While some critics called it “a bold move,” others thought that something was rotten in the state of the Barbican. After several nights of previews, the play’s structure has now been changed. “With opening night still a week away, the producers have already abandoned their most innovative intervention. Turner’s unconventional opening scene has been cut and the crucial speech returned to its rightful home, as Hamlet plunges into the depths of despair in Act III,” reports The Daily Beast.
