Chicago Tribune
- Recommended
"...Carlson — an actor new to Chicago Shakes but with a basketload of credits from Canada's Shaw Festival Theatre — delivers a distinguished performance that's reason alone to see this production. Soliloquies are dispatched with thrilling pace but are easily grasped. And if one of the keys to Hamlet is the delivery of the sardonic bon mot, Carlson has those withering asides down colder than poor Yorick's corpse."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...Hands' dramatically lit black-and-white production, awash in the pewter gloom of the sea-swept Danish coast, is not just modern (or "modernist") on the surface, though it suggests some of the strict geometry of architect Mies van der Rohe. More crucially, it is modern because Ben Carlson, the highly individualistic and technically brilliant Canadian-bred actor at its center -- is far from the classic romantic hero."
Daily Herald
- Highly Recommended
"...In Hands' very capable hands, humor arises spontaneously like the play's more somber speeches, which this high-caliber cast delivers gracefully and with a marked lack of pretense. It comes from well-timed asides and well-executed stage business evident in the play's opening moments when a soldier accidentally startles the guard he is to relieve, or in Horatio's jittery response to Hamlet's comment about seeing a ghost. It's evident in the effortless banter between Ben Carlson's erudite Hamlet and Roderick Peeples' clever gravedigger."
SouthtownStar
- Highly Recommended
"...As crafted by Hands, and with an exceptional ensemble, this production leaves other versions of the drama in the dust. This is, without a doubt, the best presentation of "Hamlet" that I have ever seen. Run to see it!"
Chicago Reader
- Recommended
"...You could argue that what makes Hamlet difficult to produce today is its sheer familiarity. This efficient, concept-free staging by veteran British director Terry Hands is more intelligent than passionate: he refuses to belabor the obvious or the notorious in Shakespeare's tragedy. Free of doubt even when he's indecisive, Ben Carlson's Hamlet broods brilliantly."
Windy City Times
- Highly Recommended
"...There are infinite reasons Shakespeare’s tragedy of a dispossessed son still sears to the bone more than 400 years after it debuted. Director Terry Hands makes them resonate in a lightning-paced, razor-wire production that illuminates the harshest aspects of a stark world defiled by greed, ambition and feral-eyed vengeance."
Chicago Free Press
- Somewhat Recommended
"...In British director Terry Hands’ Chicago debut, the play’s the thing. He avoids gimmickry and “fresh” interpretations and instead focuses laser-like on the story, leaving the flairs and flourishes to the Bard. Rather than pondering the question of whether to be or not to be a great “Hamlet,” Hands has decided to just let his “Hamlet” be. As a result, this production never quite soars but it seldom stumbles."
Gay Chicago Magazine
- Recommended
"...an enthralling evening much different from and even more satisfying than the heavy-handed tragedy we’ve seen in the past. The production is even laugh-out-loud funny at times, a surprising and notable accomplishment."
Time Out Chicago
- Recommended
"...Carlson does what the production does. He gives a clear and relatively sober reading of the text, a text which demands constant revisiting. And Hands’s staging is gorgeous and uncluttered, so by the time they get to the main event—some kinky and nimble swordplay—we don’t feel gypped."
ChicagoCritic
- Highly Recommended
"...Ben Carlson Hamlet was a terrific as his eloquence and clarity was affecting. His naturalness gave Hamlet a humanity that included sharp wit, humor and a touch of sarcasm despite his desperation in dealing with the emotional crisis of the murder of his father and the marriage of his mother to her murdered. Carlson’s emotional range from charming to raging lunatic gave him vulnerability and a humanity that evoked empathy."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Recommended
"...Even with a so-so Hamlet at its core, there is much to praise in Hands' strikingly minimalist production. Chicago diva Barbara Robertson reprises the role of Hamlet's mother Gertrude from Court Theatre's 2002 production, and she is a delight to watch. Robertson is lovely, refined and quite the flirt. It is easy to understand why Hamlet would be so outraged by his mother's seeming ambivalence over the death of her husband and remarriage to his murderer brother. Bruce A. Young's commanding Claudius makes it clear that his usurping the throne of Denmark had at least as much to do with his lust for Gertrude as his own ambition (Young also doubles as the Ghost of Hamlet's father)."
