The Angry Dane -- February 19, 2025

London Daily Telegraph, 19-February-1925

In 1922, John Barrymore played Hamlet 101 times on Broadway and then toured the US until early 1924. In 1925, he took the play to London. 

At the San Francisco Film Festival, I saw a test he did in 1934 or 1935 for a movie adaption of Hamlet, but he was having memory problems. In 1937, as part of a series called Streamlined Shakespeare, he played the part on the radio.

London Daily Mirror, 20-February-1925

THE ANGRY DANE

Mr. Barrymore's Novel Hamlet -- Miss Fay

Compton as Ophelia

By Our Dramatic Critic

Great interest was taken in the Barrymore "Hamlet," produced last night at the Haymarket Theater before a distinguished audience, which included the Earl of Oxford and Asquith.

Mr. John Barrymore's Hamlet is regarded in the States as a great histrionic achievement. This verdict would seem to have been endorsed by last night's audience, for enthusiasm was terrific.

It may be said at once that Mr. Barrymore is not the greatest Hamlet one has seen, he is a most interesting, accomplished and novel one, not reaching perhaps the ultimate profundities of the character, yet illuminating it always, and throwing into relief the natural and human qualities of the man.

Mr. Barrymore is not so much, the melancholy as the angry Dane; the supreme instance of the man with a just grievance which preys on his mind until he has purged his conscience in revenge.

The novelty of the impersonation lies in the modern or colloquial note that Mr. Barrymore strikes.

The whole company is excellent. Fay Compton as Ophelia plays the part with a power of suggestion in her acting that has surely never been surpassed. She not only distils the essential pathos of the character but makes Ophelia a more real woman than one has seen her made before.