Simple Genius

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On Thursday I went to see the NT Live showing of Hamlet – a stage performance live streamed from the Barbican in London into Wakefield Cineworld –that something like that is now possible is an impressive thing…but impressiveness was to be had in bucket loads that evening. 

Firstly there was the vision of the production – just brilliantly epic – even better when you find out the director is Lyndsey Turner who featured in my Excellent People blog earlier this month.  More impressiveness was on display in the performances of the actors including of course Benedict (I’ve decided we can be on first name terms) There was a directness and honesty about their approach to the text that transformed one of the most quoted plays in history into a fascinating journey of a man who’s life is transformed by the death of his father…which was exactly as it should be and I was entranced from start to finish…


The final bit of impressiveness came from the interview shown before the film…Melvyn Bragg was asking Benedict some pretty standard questions about what it was like to perform words so often spoken which he was answering with a pith and directness I liked.  Within this directness came two obvious and yet enlightening answers that have stayed with me since and informed the myriad of projects I am currently working on…he said that in order to bring the text to life all of those famous words have to come from the need to speak and that at the end of such an immense journey, knowing it is all to be done again, there simply an out breath…it’s genius…for all sorts of reasons when you think about it…simple genius – but then the cliché is often true most things that are genius tend to be simple…

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