#hiddlehamlet

Okay guys. Here goes. I’m going to try to remember and describe as much of the experience as possible, so you can all feel a little piece of it too. This is your warning... this is going to be a long post.

Disclaimer: this review is going to be very little about the play, and very lots about how mindblowingly gorgeous and excellent Tom was in the play. If you’re not in this to hear a dissertation on that man’s thighs in his tight-ass jeans, don’t read further. I love and deeply appreciate theatre (this is the 14th play I’ve seen since moving to London 10 months ago), but this is tumblr and I’m not really here to be a theatre critic or to dissect various interpretations of Shakespeare. I’m here to drool over sexy men. It’s right there in the title.

So, to get that boring, non-thigh-centred discussion out of the way first - the play was seriously great. I enjoyed it hugely, even apart from the magic of Tom’s Hamlet (and somehow in spite of the distraction that was my brain screaming “HE’S RIGHT THERE!!!” for 3 hours straight). I saw a similarly intimate staging of Hamlet back in January, which I found... overly intense. This one was much better. I especially liked the touches of humour throughout, which helped to break up the heavier moments and moved the story along in a nice rhythm, and brought out the humanity and likability of the characters. The cast were all fantastic, and the sparseness of the stage worked well - the focus was fully on the actors and the words they were saying. 

We were sat in the front row, far stage left...which was basically on the stage. The theatre is teeny, with no raised stage, which meant the actors were walking by us close enough to touch. Being that close to Tom for an extended period of time was full-on exhilarating. When he’d run by us, we’d get a waft of air and could actually smell him. I didn’t get to last time, so I breathed in deep this time...and it was absolutely delicious. I’m sure we were visibly swooning after each inhale.

(I’m really sad that only a limited number of people will get to see this, and I know there’s been much discussion over the supposed “exclusivity” of this show, but I must say, in being one of the lucky ones who got to be there, that it was magical how intimate this was. It was immersive - a unique and beautiful theatre experience. I feel incredibly grateful.) 

Important things must be addressed, so: couch humping. Was SO FUNNY. It wasn’t a full-on dry humping (oh god…I just had to take several minutes to think about what that would be like. I’m back now) but rather a couple of energetic thrusts. Which was enough. This was met with laughter and tons of quietly imploding vaginas, I assume.

In this same scene (a great scene), Hamlet sits on the recently-violated couch with Polonius and laughs loudly with him. It’s rather forced (he’s putting on a show here), but also - seriously adorable. Because Tom. It gifted us with a huge Hiddles grin, which is so damn infectious (as you well know). In the third bout of this laughter, Hamlet dissolves into tears. One of the best things about Tom’s Hamlet was how perfectly and naturally he navigated the quick shifts in his mood - swinging wildly between grief, rage, lunacy, amusement, earnestness - and it all felt incredibly deft and real. Also, that man is gifted when it comes to crying. I think there were real tears in his eyes for about 75% of the performance. At one point, you could see the tears falling, illuminated by the stage lights. It was beautiful. I managed to stay seated and not run to throw myself on him and cover him in kisses, which was obviously what first instinct was telling me to do.

Okay...let us talk about how good he looked. IT IS GROSS, AND MAKES NO SENSE. My brain can’t compute this level of attractiveness, and I have no appropriate words to convey it. It’s even worse in real life. And truly, this is Peak Tom, look-wise. I missed probably large sections of dialogue due to thinking about his hair (I wish this was a joke). I could not stop staring at it. The curls are entrancing. It is perfection. I will cry when he gets a haircut. THIS IS THE HAIR HE WAS BORN TO HAVE. Also, THE JEANS. Holy fucking hell. I could write a Hamlet-length soliloquy about those jeans. Maybe it was because I was on the side, so I spent a good amount of time looking at the back of him, but...I have never appreciated a view more. Those jeans were, um, very tight, and I have zero complaints. I think I could actually see his thigh muscles flexing through them. I was equally entranced by his legs and thighs throughout the whole thing. My stream of consciousness went something like this: hair-legs-thighs-jaw-eyes-voice-words-legs-ass-kill-me-now...!

Yeah... his ass in those jeans. Specifically when he was moving or jumping around a lot. I leave it to your imagination.

Overall, there is truly just something about him. We have not been imagining that. His physical presence is undeniably, overwhelmingly attractive. He’s all legs and cheekbones and curls, and the way he moves is impossible to look away from. He’s so damn FIT. His body, his face, his every movement...it’s all just sex incarnate. I can’t be eloquent about it. What the fuck do you say about this. Just. Ugh. Fuck me up.

Will you look at this? GOD.

Wardrobe stuff: I love his new peacoat. It’s really nice and looks so soft, so he looks super huggable in it. I will continue to swoon over the upturned collar look on him - it works so well with his long neck and impeccable jawline. I also like how well he rocks the hoodie-and-peacoat combo. Really, is there anything that doesn’t look good on him?! Oh, and...there was no appearance, sadly, of the beloved grey boots (those boots are like a secondary celeb spotting for us by now). He was wearing dark brown boots through the whole thing. But they looked really good too no duh, so, no big loss.

Uh-oh... this post is already very long, and I have at least 26 more things to say about all of this. I’m think I’m gonna stop here for tonight and write a part two tomorrow. Coming up: tummy peeks, dancing, leather gloves and the opinions of the lady sitting next to me on Tom’s ass in those jeans (you didn’t think I was done talking about that yet, did you?)

Kenneth Branagh interview: ‘Tom Hiddleston and I were always honest about Hamlet’

Kenneth Branagh has directed the theatrical event of 2017 – but there will be no encore, he says

Kenneth Branagh is bounding about on stage at RADA’s Vanbrugh Theatre in Bloomsbury, central London. As well as being one of the country’s best-known actors and a feted film director, he’s also president of the oldest, most prestigious drama school in the UK, and everything about his bearing suggests confidence and an ownership of this plush space. But at this precise point, he’s recalling the moment in 1979 when he recited a soliloquy from Hamlet – “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I…” – in front of the Queen and Prince Philip to mark the school’s 75th anniversary.

He gestures round the intimate auditorium, incredulous: “There was John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Edward Fox, John Hurt, all these people – and the Queen of England! I was about 19. Talk about learning to deal with nerves!” At the end, the Queen asked him how he managed to remember his lines. He meekly replied that he didn’t know.

In contrast to that daunting rite of passage, Tom Hiddleston – playing the Dane under Branagh’s direction in a special fundraising production at the school, where Hiddleston also trained – might be thought to have got off lightly. Yet he too has felt the heat this past month. A huge talking point, “Hiddleham” has eclipsed this year’s putative standout account of the part from Sherlock star Andrew Scott.

Shakespeare Magazine‏ (@UKShakespeare): A word of warning. Do not under any circumstances click to the last page of the magazine. You definitely won't like it.