The new production under the NT Live banner (though actually staged at the Barbican) was the fastest-selling show in London theatre history. The Guardian reported that in the UK, 87 per cent of cinemas showed the live screening, surely the biggest audience in history for a Shakespeare play. But whatever the title character might have said, the play was not the thing. The playwright neither. It was the pulling power of Benedict Cumberbatch that packed them in. The star appeared at the stage door after a preview imploring fans to get the word out on social media that acting to a sea of red lights on phone cameras was quite doing his head in.
So he did quite well, considering. Bearing the weight of celebrity and its expectations lightly - there's not a grand or self-regarding moment in his performance - he makes a Hamlet who is a pleasing mess of contradictions but never less than very smart.
The barely post-adolescent playfulness grates a little - the textual clues make Hamlet almost 30, so dressing in a soldier suit looks vaguely ADHD, which is unhelpful.
This is doubly true since Cumberbatch has given us a radiant portrait of a fundamentally decent man, burdened by grief and duty and trying to understand the world and his place in it.
He effortlessly renews the big soliloquies and gives the poetry a light, fresh touch and he's good at self-mockery, too: both character and star seem to say that we shouldn't take them too seriously.
