IS THIS THE BEST HAMLET?

IS THIS THE BEST HAMLET? Mary Jane and I saw enough of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s HAMLET with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart on PBS the other night to make us wonder whether this will be the best HAMLET we have ever seen. (We Tivo’d it to set it aside for when we can watch it straight through). This HAMLET will be released on DVD on May 4, and you can also find a link to it here. Mary Jane and I were immediately seized by the opening scene (my father’s favorite scene). We each exclaimed: “This is the best I’ve ever seen.” All the line readings in the first scenes were good, and Tennant’s first soliloquy was raw emotion. I have not heard the soliloquies in my head as private thoughts, and here they were from a suffering man. And then we turned it off.