🎼"Hamlet's Mum Has Got It Going On"🎵
There you go, now you've seen the show. That's about the height it reaches. Distil the tortured Prince of Denmark down to an hour and sprinkle in parody pop songs.
It so nearly works. There are a few good chuckles and a smattering of clever lyrics but, even for an hour, it feels a bit flabby.
The cast are game, with KT Ihnatyszyn giving a tour-de-force performance as Hamlet. But for every decent pun there's a piece of uninspired mugging to the audience.
The main weakness is that it looks cheap. There can be a certain charm to "we'll put on the show right here - I just think Fringe audiences deserve better than tatty cardboard props and flimsy plastic swords.
Tightened up, it could be something really special - it just fell flat for me.
2 thoughts on “Edinburgh Fringe: Hamlet The Musical”
Roger Ihnatyszyn
Its such a shame that you wrote such drivel about a show that earned 4 stars and was well received by sell out audience's and unbiased reviewers alike.
This was not intend to be a major RSC performance but a piece of comedy that everybody could enjoy. Its not about the props but the telling of a story that could be understood by everybody.
A shame for one who is, apparently, so intelligent yet so naïve to miss such a simple thing.
Yes, I am Hamlets father but I was more interested in the audience's reaction than watching the fun being played out before me that I had to go back to watch it again.
Thanks for your polite and well-reasoned criticism of my review.
The show certainly wasn't sold out when we saw it. I'm also not sure what you mean by "unbiased" reviewer. We all have biases. I don't have a show on, nor do I have friends performing, so I wasn't trying to get people to avoid this show in favour of another. Or do you think "unbiased" means "has the same opinions as me"?
The nice thing about art is that we can all have different opinions. If you read the other reviews on the Fringe website, you'll see that not everyone was so enamoured of it as you are. That's the nature of performance, different people can have different reactions to the same piece. That isn't a weakness on the part of the reviewer; it is a reflection that not all art is for everyone.
You are very welcome to read my various reviews of Shakespeare's plays to see if I like silly and accessible versions (I do!) and whether I enjoy musical versions of the classics (again, I love them).
I saw two dozen shows at the Fringe this year - and I enjoyed most of them more than this.
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