The Play’s the Thing

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: Here’s another orphan piece, orphaned insofar that I can’t find any indication that it ever ran in any of the publications that used to publish me. So I offer it as a snapshot not only of what I chose to write about in 2006, but also the kind of cultural offerings that came to the Albany area – in this case, to a school that badly needed such things.

                                                                                        

IT HAS BECOME the most daunting of theatrical roles, one that has enticed and destroyed actors for four centuries. Because the bar is perceived to have risen so high, Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy is the bane of many an actor.

Tom Wells

Yet Shakespeare’s masterpiece continues to be the most-performed play in the Western world, has been translated into every major language, and has been the subject of dozens of films and operas. The version presented Mon., Feb. 6, at Watervliet High School by Lenox, Massachusetts-based Shakespeare & Co. is a 90-minute, seven-character touring production tailored for use with school groups.

As such, it probably will serve its audiences as a first glimpse of this formidable play and can, in that context, be judged as something of a success. It moves quickly; it held the attention of a restive audience; it played up elements of Hamlet’s character that remain resonant with teenagers.

As a theater piece, this production bears the stamp of Shakespeare & Co. in its kinetic staging and energetic approach to vocal delivery. Too often, however, this energy got in the way of the play. “Speak the speech,” Hamlet is famously quoted, “trippingly on the tongue.” The youthful cast in this production tended to mistake outright yelling for passion, and, instead of tripping, sometimes fell.

Tom Wells, in his sixth season with the ensemble, took on the title role with a headstrong energy that suited Hamlet’s passions and gave the lie to the notion that Hamlet was a man who, as Laurence Olivier’s film so famously put it, “could not make up his mind.” Instead, here was Hamlet the man of action, set in his course, yet hurt and angry.

But Wells’s style is not that of what we think of as a classical Hamlet: his characterization was that of a man of this century, his face and speech informed with the patterns spread by modern television, as opposed what I would assume to be a more formal and refined presentation taught, as the play suggests, by the University in Wittenberg.

This adaptation began with a dumb-show version of the killing of Hamlet’s father, a not-uncommon opening device, but one which then gets repeated in Act Three. Like it or not, the play’s true opening scene, when a ghost appears, remains more compelling. When the ghost finally did enter (the original Act One, Scene Five), the production sprang to life.

The set was simple, consisting of eight fancy pillars and an array of dark curtains, parallel to the proscenium, that allowed for a variety of entrance and exit areas. The play also was presented with a minimum of props: chairs, swords, an uncooperative goblet, a shovel and, of course, the well-known skull.

Director Kevin G. Coleman kept the action moving deftly enough to establish a variety of playing areas and plausible continuity of time and location. In opting for a naturalistic acting style, however, he often marooned actors with their backs to the audience, forced then to shout upstage. This fate seemed to befall Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother (played by Sarah Taylor) most often. In a cavernous school auditorium, without amplification, a more presentational acting style would make the play much easier on the ears.

This wasn’t a problem for Marc Scipione, who played Hamlet’s uncle. He invested his character with an easygoing authority. Scipione was most impressive of the cast in the diction department, savoring the music and poetry of his lines. Curt Klump played Horatio, always a thankless role, with appropriate loyalty, although that tends to remove the color from the character who survives the bloodbath at the end of the play; he had a better time switching to the dark cloak he wore as Polonius, whose foolishness he nicely captured.

Nikki O’Carroll gave Ophelia more flightiness than I prefer, but my benchmark for this role is Jean Simmons in the Olivier film. But I very much enjoyed O’Carroll’s return in the last-scene cameo as Osric, which revealed that the actress had more depth than mere Ophelia suggested.

Also in the cast were Sean Jarrett, doubling as Laertes and Guildenstern (and far more effective in the comic role as the latter), and a hilarious Zachariah Goodwin, whose turn as the Gravedigger (among several other, equally effective roles) was, and here you’ll pardon me, dead on. This is a fellow with terrific presence, good comic timing, and an effortless way with the difficult text.

As an introduction to Hamlet, this production was effective in sparking an interest, and, with any luck, will persuade its audience to revisit the play both through one or more of its film versions and at a live production, another of which is bound to come across the radar before too long. To paraphrase from another Shakespeare play, age cannot wither it . . . and Hamlet presents a fresh set of insights and mystery to us each time we return to it.

Hamlet (educational touring edition)
Directed by Kevin G. Coleman
Shakespeare & Co.
Watervliet High School, Watervliet NY

– 13 February 2006