Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet 'justifies the hype' despite misfiring show

Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre has won positive reviews following the play's official opening in London last night, but the production as a whole has fared less well, and some critics wonder whether the actor's fame isn't part of the problem.

The modern-dress Hamlet, directed by Lyndsey Turner and described as the fastest-selling play in British history, made the news earlier this month when some newspaper critics broke with tradition to publish reviews of the first preview performance. Now the official reviews are out, and they're no less mixed.

Cumberbatch, whose Prince of Denmark slouches in a hoodie, listening to gramophone records as he plots his revenge, is Cumberbatch "a blazing, five-star Hamlet trapped in a middling, three-star show", says Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph.

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The man himself "justifies the hysteria" and stands equal to the best modern Hamlets", but the production is "full of hit-and-miss ideas" that dissipate its energy.

For Michael Billington in The Guardian, it's "an intellectual ragbag of a production" full of "half-baked ideas". What makes it "frustrating" is that Cumberbatch has the makings of a good Hamlet. He is pensive and resonant, but he is given "lots of silly things to do".

In the New York Times, Ben Brantley seems more impressed by the "scenic spectacle and conceptual tweaks and quirks", saying "this Hamlet is never boring", but nor is it ever moving.

Cumberbatch is "superb", says Brantley, and there is "not a soliloquy that doesn't shed fresh insight into how Hamlet thinks", but the rest of the cast barely registers as more than moving scenery. In this version, "Hamlet has never seemed so alone".

Perhaps, suggests The Independent's Paul Taylor, the problem might be Cumberbatch's fame. He may have been better tackling Hamlet "before the global success of Sherlock rocketed him into the celebrity stratosphere".

"The actor commands the stage with a whirling energy but we rarely feel soul-to-soul with this Hamlet," he says. The "insanely pressurised environment" may be to blame for Cumberbatch's failure to lay himself bare, which makes the show as a whole feel "curiously uninvolving".

Hamlet is on at the Barbican until October, and is broadcast live to cinemas on 15 October.