Miller Slams Law, Tennant & Celebrity Casting???

Director Jonathan Miller has hit out against the big-name West End casting after failing to secure a transfer for his recent Bristol production of Hamlet. He bemoaned the “obsession with celebrity”, noting that “producers might have been swayed if I’d been prepared to put in for more luminous names. But I wanted my original cast, who were absolutely first-class.”

Miller’s production, his fourth staging of Hamlet in his career, received strong notices when it ran in the “Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory” in Bristol in March (See News, 18 Mar 2008), but it came in the wake of announcements of two high-profile offerings of the same play – the first, led by David Tennant for the Royal Shakespeare Company, yesterday confirmed its post-Stratford West End dates (See News, 9 Jun 2008); the second, starring Jude Law, is the final production in the Donmar Warehouse’s year-long West End residency at Wyndham’s Theatre.

Speaking in the press, Miller took swipes at “the man from Dr Who” (in fact, Tennant had a well-established stage career before his screen success) and Law. “I suspect he can’t act better than the young unknown (Jamie Ballard) who played him (the prince0 for me, who was quite extraordinary.”