Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet sets Shakespeare’s tragedy inside London’s South Asian community, keeps the original language almost entirely intact, and puts the most famous soliloquy in theatre history inside a car cutting through London traffic. That choice alone earns two hours of your time.

The story tracks the original closely. Uncle kills father, takes the business, marries the widow, and the ghost shows up to confirm what Hamlet already suspects. What makes this version land is that Riz Ahmed is good enough to carry Shakespeare’s archaic syntax on pure performance. Richard Crouse makes the same point about Denzel Washington’s Macbeth on Apple TV Plus: when the actor is that precise, you understand the emotion before you decode the words. This Hamlet is in theaters now and it runs about two hours, which given the source material runs four to five, is some economy.

The Hamlet cocktail pairs it well: vodka, Campari, orange juice, strained into a highball, bitter and sweet in the right balance. Ophelia’s Tragic Drowning goes floral: vodka, blue curacao, elderflower liqueur, lemon, and an egg white shaken to a foam and garnished with edible flowers. Both are worth the effort.

Topics: Riz Ahmed Hamlet, new Hamlet 2025, Shakespeare cocktails, Ophelia’s Tragic Drowning, South Asian Hamlet

GUEST: Richard Crouse | http://richardcrouse.ca

Originally aired on2026-04-09