Ciaran Hinds plays Claudius as a weak villain. Whether he is actually weak, or pretending to be weak is debatable. Hinds acting did not make his Claudius easy to assess. Hinds's diction was slow and deep which made his character seem "Godfather - like" (see NY Times review below). During the scene where Laertes returns from France to avenge his father, Hinds cowers in fear and pleads for his life. After his life is spared, he comes up with the scheme to kill Hamlet.
Hamlet Directed By Lyndsey Turner (2015)
Ciaran Hinds as Claudius
“Ciarán Hinds is disastrous as Claudius. His diction is poor and his sense of character flat and dull. He sucks the life out of every scene in which he appears.”
- Click Here for full article.
"...Mr. Hinds's soft-talking, "Godfather"- like Claudius is at least a defined character."
- Click Here for full article.
"The entrance of King Claudius and his wife Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother) is a terrific moment — she wearing an exuberant, pronged tiara, sweeping down the stairs in white.But Ciaran Hinds’s Claudius is too softly spoken; and it is hard to take seriously a king who wears brown brogues."
-Click Here for full article.
"His Claudius is also on the cowardly end of the spectrum. I’ve seen drunken, lecherous ones (John Nettles in Sheffield) through to subtle, menacing statesmen (Patrick Stewart) and I find the cowardly interpretation frustrating. This is after all a man who has killed his own brother and is running a country and planning military strategy. Having him cower on the floor before Laertes feels wrong to me."
"Claudius isn’t an obvious villain from the outset, but if you don’t believe his potential to be a dangerous operative, then he simply becomes a bit dull and boring and of no threat to Hamlet at all and Ciaran Hinds did rather bore me. The final scene before the interval is visually and audibly striking, but I don’t believe that the man at its centre carries any real threat, meaning it just isn’t very satisfying in my view."
- Click Here for full article.