Royal Exchange's 'Hamlet' starring Maxine Peake to get cinema release

With NT Live proving to be so popular, with stage productions getting beamed across the land to cinemas for audiences unable to get a ticket or unwilling to visit London, the appetite for quality stage to screen seems to be growing. Now, following the huge success of the Royal Exchange’s version of ‘Hamlet’ starring Maxine Peake as the moody Prince, we can look forward to seeing it on cinema screens in a filmed version.

Filming has just finished on the production, with stage director Sarah Frankcom handing over the reigns to filmmaker Margaret Williams, no stranger to stage-to-screen productions. Her version of the BBC and Royal Opera House piece ‘Written On The Skin’ has won awards including the Gramophone Contemporary Award and the Diapason d’or. Debbie Gray who produced the film also produced the recent cinema release, ‘Northern Soul’, and co-producer Anne Beresford has worked on the likes of ‘Mouth to Mouth’ with Ellen Page.

If you got the chance to see the live show, which was superb not only for Peake’s performance but for those of the rest of the cast, might well want to see how the film version compares and, if you didn’t get a ticket, nip along but don’t start munching on your nachos during the ‘To be or not to be’ speech.