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Review Excerpts

“’KIM PUTS EXPERTISE IN ‘HAMLET’’….THE GREATEST—and most successful—contribution to the production is the appearance of Randall Duk Kim, a local actor who has achieved some measure of success in New York…. Kim has a voice like honey—well modulated and controlled, and capable of a range and power that belie his small stature. And he moves with an economy that was never evident in his pre-New York days here. His performance seems effortless—which it is not, of course; it seems honest—which it most certainly is….IN SUMMARY, Kim is a joy to watch work….”
               –George Herman, HONOLULU ADVERTISER (3/22/1976)

“’’HAMLET’ A RESPECTABLE FAILURE’….RANDALL DUK KIM, an Island actor who has established a professional reputation on the Mainland, is making his first appearance on a Honolulu stage in six years, playing the title role…. Kim delivers a bafflingly cool Hamlet. He has enormous vocal resources and delivers the Shakespearean language with flowing, modulated beauty that mesmerizes an audience during each of his soliloquies. WHILE KIM CREATES beauty with language, he never creates a fully developed character with Hamlet, never offering his audience a flesh-and-blood human being who can generate empathetic response….”
               –Pierre Bowman, HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN (3/23/1976)

“….Randall Duk Kim’s Hamlet is impressive. It pleases me because it contains all of the subtle complications I find whenever I reread the play…. Kim’s Hamlet is physically strong and intellectually powerful. He’s so grieved at the loss of his father, disgusted by his mother’s rapid remarriage and confused about the visit of the ghost that he can’t begin to conceal his violent emotions. When we’re not gripped by the grief in Kim’s rich, resonant voice, we’re absorbed by the movie on his face, reeling off the external signs of ‘that within which passeth show.’…  I was impressed by Randall Kim and pleased with his interpretation of Hamlet’s character; moreover, I was thrilled and entertained by the poetry of William Shakespeare.”
               –John White, HAWAII OBSERVER (4/13/1976)