The role of Prince Hamlet in a significant production of the classic Shakespeare tragedy is always a pretty big deal, but with the ongoing success of Benedict Cumberbatch in his TV and movie roles you’re left sort of asking who it’s a big deal for; Cumberbatch or Shakespeare? However, the reality is that the Barbican and the theatre-going community in general are by far the biggest winners in this tag team effort of leviathan proportions as the greatest playwright of all time gets one of the best actors of the moment in one of his most momentous plays.
The production of Hamlet at the Barbican will open on the 5th August with just short of a three month run taking it through until the 31st October 2015. The bad news is that the Barbican theatre has already sold out of its allocated tickets for all of the performances, so Cumberbatch, Shakespeare and theatre fans might be a little disappointed right from the very start. The good news, though, is that 100 £10 tickets will be made available for each performance, scattered throughout the theatre auditorium, so all is not entirely lost.
More information on these tickets will be released in late spring/early summer 2015, so we’ll be updating here as and when the announcements come in. There will also be the odd one or two returned and cancelled tickets to pick up on, so if you are crazy keen on not missing out on Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as Hamlet then you might want to subscribe to the Barbican’s newsletter to get updates send to you. A word of warning on getting your tickets from resellers, as the Barbican takes a pretty hard line on that type of thing and can void tickets up-to and on the day of the performance.
The performances will take place Monday to Saturday at 7.15pm, except on Tuesday the 25th August 2015, which will have a 7pm start. Matinee performances will take place at 1.30pm every Saturday from 15th August onwards. As Shakespeare’s longest play, anyone lucky enough to get to see Hamlet at the Barbican will need to set themselves for the long haul, with a run time of around three hours, including a 20 minute intermission.
If you’re a bit of a philistine or a recently converted art lover and former skip rat, here’s our rapid fire equivalent to the York Notes synopsis to the play. Essentially, it’s a tragedy that sees the young Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, doing all he can to enact his revenge on his uncle, Claudius, who has killed his father, the former King, seized control of the power and future bloodline of the throne and taken his mother Gertrude to be his wife, the git.
With a war with neighbouring invaders Norway looming, led by their own prince, Fortibras, Hamlet must wrestle with his conscience, his sanity, the fate of the nation and the ghostly spectre of his late father in a bid to exact vengeance on Claudius for the murder of his father. Bringing together themes of madness, revenge, mortality, family, religion, deception and sex it’s one of history’s epic tragedies and with Benedict Cumberbacth in the lead role it should be one of the most memorable performances of it.
The production of Hamlet at the Barbican in 2015 will be directed by Lyndsey Turner, who previously won both the won the Critic’s Circle Theatre Awards and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director in 2014 for Chimerica, and it is being produced by Sonia Friedman Productions. It hasn’t been confirmed as of yet, but the play may go on to be screened nationwide at a cinema near you, so again, we’ll update as and when there’s more information.
