Benedict Cumberbatch News: Actor's Mom Says Hamlet Performance Is 'Bloody Good' Despite Critical Reviews

Benedict Cumberbatch's performance in the Shakespearian play Hamlet has received mixed reviews as it formally opens at the Barbican Theater in London on Tuesday night. Amidst these reviews, Wanda Ventham, Benedict's mom, said her son did a 'bloody good' act.

"He was quite lively growing up, but I thought that was phenomenal," she told the media as mentioned in Time.

Ventham then urged critics to consider her son as "bloody good Hamlet' further saying that Cumberbatch's father, Timothy Carlton, also an actor, is 'extraordinarily proud' of him.

Mark Gatiss, who worked with the 37-year old in both Hamlet and the series Sherlock, echoed Wanda's good reviews saying, "I always knew he had it in him. We're all very proud and impressed," he said in a BBC interview.

As sources have observed the play's box office success is highly influenced by Cumberbatch's presence in the play and his fame in the movie industry. However, a lot of critics have been very keen in pointing out flaws in production.

According to The Guardian, many critics slammed the play for being 'flawed' and 'patchy' with a lot of criticisms about the staging and design and some of Cumberbatch's costume changes on stage.

The Guardian's Michael Billington has only given two stars for its 'frustrating and dismal production.'

"He [Cumberbatch] is trapped inside an intellectual ragbag of a production by Lyndsey Turner that is full of half-baked ideas. Denmark, Hamlet tells us, is a prison. So too is this production," he said in his review.

Another critic, Dominic Cavendish from The Telegraph has also given a three-star rating to the show with the actor as somebody who is responsible for its hysteria, as BBC mentioned.

"He is, in truth, a blazing, five-star Hamlet trapped in a middling, three-star show. The evening's energies are dissipated not intensified by the confining Elsinore dreamed up by designer Es Devlin, and director Lyndsey Turner's tendency to hack the text."

Benedict Cumberbatch stars alongside with Ciaran Hinds as Claudius, Anastasia Hille as Gertrude, Leo Bill as Horatio and Sian Brooke as Ophelia.