Tag Archives: Benedict Cumberbatch

Blog Hop, coffee, College, culture, Fitness, Theatre

If We Were Having Coffee… On October 17

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Hello my lovelies!

How are you? Come on in for a quick cuppa in today’s Weekend Coffee Share!

If we were having coffee today, I’d preface this by saying I’m essentially locked in my flat to avoid distraction for the next two weeks as I have deadlines looming and need to get stuff done.

I’d also tell you that my Sherlock fanfic The Bravery of the Soldier is currently in 22nd Place in the Inkitt Fandom Writing Contest!! It’s the first contest I’ve entered as a writer, and to be 22nd out of more than 1,000 entries is making me all kinds of giddy.

Voting ends on October 21, so if you haven’t already, please head over to Inkitt via this link, click on the heart to like my story and tell others to do the same! 39 of you already did, and I know that I will not get the 200+ votes needed to reach the top, but Top 15 would be awesome!

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culture, Review, Shakespeare, Theatre

Intense theatre with unexpected hilarity – Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre, London

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The challenge every production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet faces is to make the tragedy about the titular Danish prince exciting for new audiences. Director Lyndsey Turner manages this with aplomb, not least thanks to this summer’s top leading man, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Cumberbatch (Sherlock, The Imitation Game) has to hit the ground running as soon as the curtain goes up. The first words he mutters on stage are the “to be, or not to be” soliloquy, possibly the most famous lines Shakespeare ever wrote. Reminiscing about his dead father, while Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy plays on a record player, this Hamlet shows his vulnerable and depressed side from the start, the music enhancing the sentiment Cumberbatch pours into his lines.

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culture, Movie, Review

Tasteful biopic of a truly remarkable man: The Imitation Game

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When you turn a true story into a movie, you need a cast capable of portraying remarkable, real people with all their flaws. The first thing you’ll notice about The Imitation Game, is how outrageously good the cast is and how well they work together.

Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Hawking, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) stars as computing pioneer Alan Turing, who, along with a small team, had the ultra-secret task to break the German Enigma code during Word War II. He portrays Turing as a socially awkward genius who had to lead a secret life not only because of his top-secret work – the reveal of which would have carried the death sentence for treason – but also because he was homosexual at a time when this was still a criminal offence.

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culture, Review, Theatre

National Theatre’s Frankenstein: The Role Reversal

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It is not very often that you get to watch a play in which the two lead actors switch roles every night. It’s rarer still to be able to watch both performances and then compare how the actors approached the characters. Yet that’s exactly what you are able to do with The National Theatre’s 2011 play Frankenstein.

Last week, I went to an encore screening of Frankenstein, that featured Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, The Imitation Game, Third Star) as The Creature and Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary, Endgame, Eli Stone) as Victor Frankenstein.

Yesterday, they showed the play with reverse cast,which means that Benedict Cumberbatch became the mad scientist while Jonny Lee Miller became his creation.

It’s amazing to see two takes on the same role. While both have the set script and actions to adhere to, the way they portray their characters differs greatly.

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culture, Review, Theatre

Thrilling and thought-provoking: Frankenstein at the National Theatre, Encore Screening

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It does take skill to adapt Mary Shelley’s gothic classic Frankenstein for the stage without turning it into a caricature of the Boris Karloff films. But that is exactly what director extraordinaire Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), and screen writer Nick Dear, managed to do.

Their Frankenstein, which had its original run from February until May 2011 at the National Theatre in London, is a true theatrical masterpiece, both thrilling and thought-provoking.

So popular was the play’s original run that Encore screenings of a recorded performance have been shown worldwide every year since 2011. The two lead actors, Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, War Horse, The Hobbit) and Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary, Trainspotting, Dark Shadows) alternated nightly between the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creation.

This version starred Benedict Cumberbatch as The Creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Frankenstein, and it’s one of those rare performances that is so powerful and thought-provoking that it needs to be digested for a while before all the facets of the play’s brilliance fit together like a puzzle.

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