HAMLET CANCELLED!
Colin has been forced to withdraw from playing Hamlet at London's Riverside Studios next year after changes to his filming schedule. The show, planned to launch a new company Concentric Circles, was to open in January. It has now been cancelled although Firth is understood to be keen to resurrect the show at a later date. The actor, famous for his roles in Bridget Jones's Diary and the television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, was originally discovered whilst playing Hamlet at the Drama Centre in North London. Concentric Circles artistic director Christopher Fettes is a former director of the Drama Centre.

Colin Firth: "My worst fears were fulfilled when my filming schedule for early next year changed meaning that I would have to withdraw from Concentric Circles' production of HAMLET. I realise this may come as a disappointment not only to those people who were looking forward to seeing my performance but also to Concentric Circles and Riverside Studios who were working to make the production a success. Although this change to my schedule was completely unforeseen and unavoidable, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all parties concerned for any disappointment felt due to the production being cancelled. Looking to the future, I am now exploring other possibilities of working with Concentric Circles again." [Source: Riverside Studios]

Director Christopher Fettes: "Colin and I had talked about HAMLET for sometime and it appeared to be the ideal production with which to launch a new theatre company: Concentric Circles. We all knew the risk of film schedules changing but had hoped that we could make these dates work. " Signed Christopher Fettes, Artistic Director. [From the Riverside Studios press release]

Refunds are available for those who have already bought tickets for the Firth production.

DIRECTOR: Christopher Fettes who previously directed Colin in the plays Hamlet [Drama school 1983] and The Lonely Road 1985] 

Next year, he gets his biggest chance to defy that advice, playing Hamlet at the Riverside Studios, directed once again by Fettes. "I was beginning to wonder if it had passed me by. Albert Finney said you should play it at 20 or 40, but I think Hamlet's 30. By my own theory, I'm 10 years too old, but I'm itching to do it." The play has been much discussed recently, with Simon Russell Beale's political prince and Adrian Lester's acclaimed interpretation for Peter Brook, but Firth is not nervous of Elsinore fatigue, only determined that his own shot should be his proudest moment. Clearly, he is pretty thrilled with life right now but trying not to be smug.[The London Times, 24 December 2000] 

From The Observer 9 April, 2000
Christopher Fettes, who taught Firth at the London Drama Centre, says that "as a boy and a young man, Colin was a person of conspicuous intelligence. Real intelligence. It is very rare to have the privilege of training people for the theatre who are by nature poets. And Colin is." Read the full article here.

THE PLOT: Prince Hamlet is commanded to avenge his murder by his father's ghost. The culprit is his uncle, Claudius, who has recently married Hamlet's mother. Hamlet attempts to pretend to be mad, to prove his uncle's guilt and to reform his mother. He succeeds in murdering the wrong person, alerting Claudius to what's going on, and sending the girl he loves insane. He is sent abroad. Avoiding an attempt to have him murdered, Hamlet returns to Denmark. Claudius hatches a counterplot to have Hamlet poisoned in a rigged fencing match. As he dies, Hamlet finally manages to take his revenge using the same sword that has sealed his own fate. Click here for more summaries and info on the play. 

About Christopher Fettes:
Fettes became an actor with Joan Littlewood, a founder member of the Royal Court; and he met the Jewish actor Harold Lang who introduced him to Stanislavsky and his Method.

Fettes studies with Lang and the Swedish teacher Yat Malmgren in the company of people like Peter Brook, Tony Richardson and Bill Gaskill, led to his foundation in 1963 of the Drama Centre for English students who were drawn to the ideas of French, German and American theatre

Fettes still works there, creating 700 pound productions with the students. One of the most recent was Hamlet with Colin Firth, who creates some classic vignettes in The Lonely Road with Anthony Hopkins. [Source: The London Times, February 1985]