Trust me on this. If you haven’t already acquired a ticket for the short run of this production, hop to it. Because, in the decades to come, you’ll want to be one of those fortunate enough to say, ‘Oh yes, I saw Izzard’s solo version of Hamlet. I was there.’ You know, like Woodstock or the Beatles on the roof of the Apple building.
Hyperbole? Actually, no. And here’s why.
Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet review – quick links
Prodigious memory
It’s impossible to talk about this production without standing back in awe at the actual technical feat of one person remembering the entire text of Hamlet. Famously, Shakespeare’s longest play, Hamlet revolves around the eponymous Prince of Denmark, also famously one of the heftiest roles in the canon to take on.
With over 1500 lines, the character holds the Guinness World Record for having the most lines in any play (I don’t know how this accounts for such literary juggernauts as Mahabharata, but I digress). It’s always impressive to see anyone remember them all. But to do that… and those of every other character too? Insane.
Izzard isn’t the first to take on a solo Hamlet; Birmingham-based British actor Andrew Cowie toured his own adaptation in the 1990s – with the play distilled to an hour – while the Canadian actor Raoul Bhaneja has been touring his longer version on and off since 2006, playing 17 characters. But Izzard’s Hamlet, adapted here by older brother Mark Izzard and directed by Selina Cadell, sees the performer play 23 different characters in a production that runs for two hours and 20 minutes (including interval).
At the age of 64, when many of us of a similar vintage would struggle to remember the ingredients for a beef burger – ‘two all-beef patties, cheese, special sauce… oh, whatever’ – Izzard’s recall is terrifyingly impressive.
ArtsHub: Suzy Eddie Izzard talks to ArtsHub
But then you remember that this is the same person who in 2009 ran 43 marathons over 51 days, and then topped that in 2016 by running 27 marathons in 27 days. Let’s not even touch on her would-be political career, suffice to say when it comes to challenges most of us would balk at, Izzard is the last word in indefatigability.
Tenacity and clarity
But if this were merely a vehicle for a performer to display their extraordinary memory skills, the effects would pall very quickly – nobody likes a show-off. Rather this is a stripped down, bare stage production in which Izzard wears her usual full make-up, has her hair tied back in a tight ponytail and sports leather trousers and a fitted jacket that could pass for something approximating a doublet, but is really a modern fashionable top.
The lighting is even, with just one downward spot on the back wall of the stage to lend an otherworldly glow to the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet senior. But that’s it.
This is a production that is all about the text – trotting across and around the stage, twirling or twisting the head to delineate between characters, Izzard barely changes her vocal delivery for the different speakers. There’s a touch of working-class brogue for the gravediggers, a softer tone for Ophelia – especially as she loses her wits – but it’s all very subtle. Some of the lines are delivered rapid fire, some spun out to give their full dramatic effect. It’s a masterclass in telling the story and letting the words do the work.
And it’s useful here to also remember that this style of performance has been part of Izzard’s stand-up for years – playing a dialogue between two or more characters by speaking in one voice, then shifting position to take on the responding character. Death Star Canteen would be funny if it were just Darth Vader in a food queue. But we need the hapless cafeteria worker to make the sketch completely hilarious.
In Izzard’s recent stand-up show, The Remix Tour, which came to Hamer Hall in May (having been postponed from November 2025 to accommodate her knee surgery), there were moments when she thought her jokes weren’t working, seemingly unaware it was a sound issue – that many of us in the audience actually didn’t catch what was said. There are no such problems in Hamlet. Even at her most breakneck, she speaks the verse with clarity and total comprehension.
While introducing the production with a brief address to the audience to contextualise what’s to come and ensure any traditional Izzard fans expecting a comic take on the Bard are disabused of that notion, the delivery does often have her trademark vocal techniques and certainly that familiar physicality. So, any humour in the text – and of course it is there, notwithstanding the rampant misery abounding in Elsinore – is mined magnificently.
But, and here’s the rub, somehow Izzard also gives us one of the most moving final Ophelia scenes I’ve seen. Those big, heavily mascaraed eyes brimming, but not giving into histrionics. Because that would be showing off. And that’s not what Izzard’s Hamlet is about. First, last and in every which way, here, the play’s the thing.
