Liz’s Blog

Dear Simon Russell Beale,

I really enjoyed your reading of Hamlet. My high school English class just got finished “reading” it, but we really listened to you read it for the most part. I liked it better that way; because I would much rather listen to you read it then read it myself. I think you read with a great British accent for all of the characters. However, I do feel like all of the men in the play sounded exactly alike and all of the women sounded exactly alike. That made it a little confusing sometimes, but since we were all reading a long in our books it really wasn’t a big deal. I really enjoyed how you followed the book so closely. That made it so much easier to follow along because they were pretty much the same word-for-word.

As for your interpretation of the play, most of the things were the same way that I interpreted them. We also watched a film of Hamlet for Act 5, and the queen in that is way more bold and decisive than you have her in your reading. I think that is how I picture her too, or at least that is how I want to picture her. I liked listening to your reading much better than watching the movie because the way I pictured all of the characters from hearing you describe their actions and what they look like was completely different from how this movie had them casted.
Thank you so much for producing this audio version! It was wonderful!

Sincerely,
Liz