This is by far my favorite Shakespeare play (and probably my favorite play of all time). I think why I enjoy this play so much is how mentally ambiguous Hamlet is throughout the play. Is he only faking his crazy to find out who murdered his father, or is he slowly losing his mind in the process? I also enjoy how you interpret the play can be totally in the hands of how it is acted out through its various stage, TV and film interpretations. The first time I dealt with Hamlet was in a high school classroom setting and at first I didn’t understand the themes behind the story, but grew to love this play after analyzing it further in my Shakespeare college course and watching Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film version.
I am a big fan of any version of Hamlet that takes care for Orphelia’s character and fleshes out her madness as much as it does for Hamlet’s. My favorite scene is his exchange with his beloved Orphelia in Act III Scene I where he goes completely bonkers on her (go thee to a NUNNERY!) simply because of the many ways you can interpret the scene in regards to how much of the exchange and the emotions behind it is fabricated and how much is real. If this scene didn’t make you cry, you need to re-read the scene until you DO CRY!
Anyways, read this and love it as much as I do.
A murdered King. A usurped Prince. A promise of revenge. Returning to court to find his father murdered and his mother married to the murderer, Hamlet faces a terrible dilemma. This is Shakespeare's great tragedy of passion, corruption and revenge.
Rob Icke's acclaimed adaptation of Shakespeare's most famous play originally ran at London's Almeida Theatre before transferring to the West End. This revised and updated edition was published to coincide with the run at New York's Park Armory in summer 2022.