"Dean and Jocelyn’s “Hamlet” is brooding, moving and riveting. These two artists have put a softly steaming small choir in the orchestra pit, and musicians in balcony boxes for fractured fanfares. And, through acoustic means and groaning subwoofers alike, they have put the agonized characters nearly inside your bloodstream."
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"In its musical exploration of a shattered spirit, Dean’s score belongs with an extravagantly theatrical mid-20th-century idiom that has never gotten much traction at the Met."
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"In Mr. Armfield’s direction, nothing is ever quite realistic, whether it’s Hamlet leaping around the stage like a child playing hopscotch, or the chorus lined up and facing forward, rigid as automatons."
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"The striking if unengaging work proved to be less a straightforward adaptation of Shakespeare than a spikey, self-conscious meditation on 'Hamlet.' While it’s unlikely to take its place next to Verdi’s 'Otello' and 'Falstaff' or Gounod’s 'Roméo et Juliette,' it did offer the marvelous English tenor Allan Clayton the opportunity to make a remarkable local debut as the tortured and ineffectual Prince of Denmark."
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"Dean makes no secret about where we are headed with a score that is intensely dramatic from the first note. The entire string section seems to creep along the backs of our necks as a nightmarish chorus emanates from the stage, and occasionally from places we cannot see in the house."
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"While watching this 'Hamlet,' a plethora of thoughts came to me. Is this an opera or a sung play with music? Is this a self-aware satire or a tragic melodrama? Is it 'Hamlet' or a commentary on 'Hamlet?' ... This identity crisis in many ways mirrors its titular character quite well, thus creating a situation of form and content being solidly united."
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"Clocking in at over three hours, with one intermission, the opera is as unwieldy as most productions of the play. Opera doesn’t need to be an endurance test. By the end of the first act, which runs for 105 minutes, the audience was getting restive. Standing near an exit at intermission, a small, but steady stream of people left, not to return. Since heeding Polonius’ oft-repeated words regarding brevity wasn’t in the cards, surely another break could have been inserted to lighten the load."
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