Liz’s Blog

Dear Mr. Kenneth Branagh,

I really enjoyed your performance of Hamlet!  Our English class was reading it this year and we only watched the last act to see how the performance compared and went along with our reading of it.  Most of the characters were exactly how I envisioned them and the set was perfect!  I really liked how closely the performance followed the book.  However, no offense, but I think you were a little too old to play Hamlet.  Shakespeare makes him seem young and like he was returning from college or something when his father died and his mother got remarried.  He is portrayed to still be a young boy and Hamlet in the performance looked much too old to be playing the Hamlet that Shakespeare wrote about.  I think you did a very good job portraying the emotions of Hamlet.  As we all know, Hamlet is a very emotional person.  Whenever he finds out it was Ophelia’s funeral he was watching, he was very upset and angered and you did a very good job or portraying those feelings to the audience!

I also thought the ending was a bit of a stretch.  Hamlet throwing the sword and pinning Claudius to the throne was a little exaggerated and unrealistic.  I mean, what are the chances of a sword being thrown from off a balcony hitting a moving object and pinning him to the throne?  I also thought it was a bit strange how the chandelier came swinging from the ceiling and hit Claudius right in the face.  The queen was a lot different in the performance than I imagined her.  She didn’t seem as weak and quiet in the performance as she was in the play.  She seemed like she was more than “just there.” 

Overall, I really enjoyed your performance and think the performance as a whole was very good and entertaining!

Sincerely,

Liz