Yevgeny Mironov is everybody's darling and a continually validated hope of the Russian stage.
The whole cast was great, but the best of all was Hamlet – Yevgeny Mironov ... . An amazing creature: full of life, always keen to laugh, to gab with buddies, to stay out all night clubbing – a boy like any other; and yet so different, so quixotic, so profound of feeling, so vulnerable, capable of such deep blushing love and such fierce hatred – a prince by birth and deed.
The Prince of Denmark as played by Mironov is sure to make theater history. It is as though his lines were not written by Shakespeare but born spontaneously in the actor's head.
Hamlet's Hamlet is alive like no one else on that stage. He's warm. He cares. But how does one tell if that's part of Stein's concept or an aspect of Mironov's artistic makeup? Maybe it's just the sort of charisma the man has – to be alive every second of his existence, to be the center, to rivet eyes and hearts, to radiate energy... ... When Mironov's Hamlet raises a dagger over the head of Feklistov's Claudius, the air between the dagger's point and the enemy's back turns tangibly thick, and you know that the Prince can never surmount that invisible obstacle. Such is Mironov's acting. Such is the nature of true artists – the very air around them is charged and takes part in the act.
Mironov is that rare actor capable of conducting a high-voltage current, of tirelessly proving that acting is all about passion. By the end of the show his face is white as chalk and his eyes are completely mad.
Mironov's Hamlet – a tragic artist who is forced to kill – ... carries the show almost single-handedly.
We note the unanimous critical praise for the lead – Yevgeny Mironov. The stern Dolzhansky remarks, "Here is Hamlet. Any doubts that Yevgeny Mironov is just about the most interesting Russian actor of his generation can now be laid to rest." Most critics adopt a similar tone in assessing Mironov's performance.
The secret here is Hamlet – Yevgeny Mironov. I have often heard that this actor's stage roles never stand still but evolve and gather strength with every performance; now I have witnessed it. A round-faced Russian boy with looks more suited to a character actor than a leading man, he can, it turns out, be anything at all – a real Prince and a true tragic hero. Mironov's Hamlet was the most natural thing about this staging: ... he had the impetus of meaning (without which "To be" is not to be), an astonishing emotional output (those emotions seemed to reach to the very top of the circus dome), agility, an outward ease that is the highest form of craftsmanship. He showed a protest against fate, a child's defenselessness in that fate's feral face which few of us can ever escape, and a man's wisdom in bowing to its burden. It was impossible not to love this Hamlet ..., not to feel his death as a personal loss.
This mounting is not to be missed, if only to see how diverse Yevgeny Mironov can be. At first his Hamlet seems an amalgamation of every possible human trait: his voice is equally natural in every register and as expressive as his sax, through which his deep despair at times comes pouring out. ... [But] his mercurial nature increasingly manifests two stable qualities: integrity and solicitude. The payoff of the production ... is Yevgeny Mironov's Hamlet, born before our eyes and able to feel the throbbing issues of his times as his own.
Mironov's fanatical devotion to his work exhibits itself again in the musical aspect of the production. In nine months he's done the impossible – learned to play the sax. But whether it's the sax or the harp that he plays is not essential to the role of Hamlet. The crucial question is, why does the suffering of the young Prince break the hearts of today's audience? The answer is in Mironov's acting. ... His Hamlet has encompassed so much that it's taken the actor to a whole different level.

[Translated by Vlada Chernomordik for the Yevgeny Mironov Official Website]