Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...I suspect a good portion of Izzard's audience has not been to Chicago Shakespeare before. One reward was a chance to see Izzard up close in a way that would have attracted security in 2010. Another is to see an artist who deeply believes in taking risks and who loves to share the rewards with Chicago."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...This version of the play is adapted for Eddie Izzard (who now goes by Suzy off-stage) by her brother Mark and directed by Selina Cadell. The adaptation and production are both quite straightforward, providing a complete, lucid telling of the tale, with Izzard playing all the characters. It takes place on an elegant set, from designer Tom Piper, of white and subtly pink walls effectively representing a castle and yet also suggesting both a prison cell and a modern spa, both appropriate for a play in which Hamlet feels both trapped and overly meditative."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...But as anyone who has followed Eddie Izzard for a while knows, she’s not just a mugging shtick machine, but an actor of sinewy intelligence and quicksilver chops. Her take on Shakespeare’s tragic Danish prince (now in a short run at Chicago Shakes) may not be the deepest or most lyrical you’ll ever see. But I found that it provided a chance to connect with parts of Hamlet’s character and circumstances that I hadn’t considered before."
Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended
"...Certainly, Eddie's mastery of voice, posture, eye contact, and character are on full display and she has every right in the world to ask the audience to revel in her virtuosity, but this is nothing so cold or empty as that. There is feeling in every character, and each stays with the audience. Her Polonius, for example, apparently does not have use of his right arm and limps badly on the same leg. But this is no simple visual to ease transitions in dialogue-heavy scenes–it calls to mind his age, but also the possibility of his service to country."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...Eddie Izzard is a naturally talented comedian and performer, and even if this were just an exercise in self indulgence, I would probably still have rushed to see it. Happily, this performance was much, much more than that. In the intimate space at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, I got to watch that talented performer explore the work of a great writer with intelligence and wit and above all, joy."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...A college student returns home to find that his uncle killed his father, married his mother and wants his nephew/son out of the picture. Typical family drama. But Hamlet is also a ghost story, where the murdered limbo-living father presses his immobile, sometimes suicidal, son to avenge his death. Why is this tale repeated so often? To summarize/bastardize Harold Bloom, it's because Shakespeare invented the human being in his plays, a real rebirth to echo the larger Renaissance when this piece was penned. Previously, entertainments contained stock, overdrawn and oversimplified creatures, but the Bard was one of the first to craft nuanced and complicated emotions and reactions for his characters."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Anyone familiar with Izzard’s comedy won’t be surprised to find that her verbal dexterity as a stand-up performer means she’s an able interpreter of Shakespeare’s work. The single most important quality an actor brings to Shakespeare is the ability to make the language clear and precise — speaking it “trippingly on the tongue,” as Hamlet advises the players. Here Izzard’s performance shines, achieving superlative clarity despite playing more than 20 characters single-handedly. From the confluence of linguistic acumen and performative virtuosity derives the show’s appeal: the primal power of her storytelling ability."
Chicago Culture Authority - Recommended
"...Izzard is a comedian of fierce intelligence, great wit and a wonderfully punk aesthetic. As she noted in a curtain speech after Saturday’s opening here, it’s a very American thing to mount a Shakespearean tragedy with someone of her non-standard acting background. In London, she noted wryly, they wouldn’t look at her resume and think her well-suited to carry such a production."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...So... A one-person "Hamlet," retaining much of the text of Shakespeare's longest and arguably knottiest play, which comprises no fewer than twenty-two living characters and one ghostly one? Is it a tour de force or a tour de farce? That is the question."
