“A brilliant interpretive essay on the famous play, funny, insightful, and really rather exciting.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Clever people like Shakespeare. They like the intricacies, the plot twists, the infinite possible readings, the characters, the entrances, and the exits. Few entrances in Shakespeare are more celebrated than that of the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the battlements of Elsinore. In ‘Waiting for Hamlet’ writer David Visick – the International Kenneth Branagh New Drama Writing Award, 2018 – imagines what the shade of the murdered king was up to in the time before that biggest of big entrances.

We enter to find King Hamlet angry, bored, and listless, determined to posthumously intervene in the affairs of Denmark and right the wrong done to him by his treacherous brother. Hamlet sr. is in company with the ghost of his auld fool Yorick who isn’t entirely certain, but suspects he may have a role in what’s to come. What follows is a brilliant interpretive essay on the famous play, funny, insightful, and really rather exciting. It was the pace wot won it.

As King Hamlet and Yorick, Tim Marriott and Nicholas Collett respectively, deliver each crackling line of dialogue, each amazing twist of the family and political drama, with aplomb. Tim and Nicholas are star strikers in the EdFringe league. It’s a joyous thing to see them masterfully unravel, pack and repack, this soon-to-be classic of the Shakespearian homage genre (is that a thing yet?).

Some say that their idea of heaven is waking up to find a new Wodehouse story on the bedside table each and every day. My idea of paradise hereafter involves a daily dose of Fringe Theatre of this calibre and not just in August. Master of the eternal revels, take note. This is the show folk will be recommending when asked for their top EdFringe tips of 2022.

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