A few noteworthy Hamlets
Daniel Day-Lewis
A dashing, athletic and completely overwrought Hamlet in Richard Eyre’s 1989 National Theatre production that featured Judi Dench as Gertrude, Day-Lewis walked off the stage midperformance and never worked in the theater again. The backstage legend was that Day-Lewis had encountered the ghost of his father, though years later, the actor who famously lives his parts offered a more conventional psychological explanation.
Liev Schreiber
With his rhetorical command and interpretive boldness, Schreiber announced himself as the best equipped American Hamlet since Kevin Kline. Unfortunately, Schreiber’s performance, boiling over with a grief that edged into sardonic fury, was undone by the madcap auteur antics of Andrei Serban’s 1999 Public Theater production.
Simon Russell Beale
No Hamlet in recent memory has handled the soliloquies with the depth of feeling and verbal finesse that Beale showed in John Caird’s National Theatre production that traveled to the U.S. in 2001. Beale gave us an ardently bookish Hamlet, a graduate student too in love with learning to finish his dissertation. But the poetry trumped the drama. Beale came off as an angry fusspot in his scenes with Ophelia, and when he vowed to drink hot blood, it was clear he’d rather turn on the kettle and pick up a good novel.
Adrian Lester
Perhaps this young century’s most elegant Hamlet, Lester deployed his velvety voice and physical grace to intermittent glory in Peter Brook’s distilled staging, which toured the U.S. in 2001. Brook may have been too ruthless in his editing, paring the politics along with a good deal of plot, but Lester’s sensitivity added density and light.
Jude Law
The most underrated of the modern Brits (Ralph Fiennes, David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch) who have tackled the role, Law wasn’t simply a matinee idol out for a prestige stroll. A vigorous, always-in-motion Prince, he may have raced frantically through a few of the soliloquies, but he infused refreshing momentum into Michael Grandage’s 2009 Broadway production (which originated at London’s Donmar Warehouse). Hamlet’s therapy session was canceled. But the tale, thrumming with suspense, revealed why it’s timeless.