#HiddleHamlet is a ★★★★ success (for the few lucky critics who got tickets)

Michael Billington: Few shows are seemingly more exclusive than this… Hiddleston, as we know from past performances, is an accomplished Shakespearean actor… If I had to pick out Hiddleston’s key quality, it would be his ability to combine a sweet sadness with an incandescent fury. He suggests a fierce intellect gnawed by intense melancholy and yet subject to bouts of intemperate rage….In one way, it is sad that this production will be seen by so few people. But its purpose is to raise money in a good cause rather than to embellish reputations.And, even if it rarely shocks one into new awareness, it has clarity, swiftness and, in the person of Hiddleston, a compelling Hamlet with a genuine nobility of soul.

Ann Treneman: Hiddleston is a fine Prince from the get-go, when we see him sitting on a stage bare but for a piano, picking out the notes, singing a lament for his father (though, it must be said, he can’t sing). He makes the role completely his own, emotional, magnetic, canny, often frolicsome. The words seem natural, effortless. He bounds around the stage and his duelling is fierce… The only shame is that so few will see his HiddleHamlet.

Nataliia Zhuk: London has seen a spate of them in recent years; there are three different productions playing in the capital this weekend alone. But none has been as anticipated as this one since Benedict Cumberbatch played the Dane in 2015… This Hamlet hooks you in at once… It opens with Hiddleston’s sharp profile, silhouetted in front of a small piano. He sings “And will he not come again?” in a quivering voice… [Hiddleston’s]  Hamlet is proactive, masculine, edgy to the point of aggression – and definitely, absolutely sane. His madness is a ruse, through and through… You wouldn’t bet against Hiddleston returning to the role in a more public forum.

BBC NEWS: Tom Hiddleston’s performance as Hamlet has been praised by theatregoers after the Shakespearian tragedy opened to a select audience in London. The Thor and Night Manager star delivered a performance full of “grief and rage”, according to ticketholders.