Falling In Love (with Hamlet) Again

The struggle of staging a production of Shakespeare for a 21^st century audience is making sure that the audience can always follow, if not exactly the script, the story. Even with terrific acting, it can be difficult for a modern audience to understand what is happening on stage without visual cues to guide them.

 

Too often productions rely on gimmickry that dilutes the authenticity of the work. Trinity's production of Hamlet effectively uses lighting, costume and production design to deepen the audience's understanding of the story and only rarely crosses the line into gimmickry.

 

The set is a 1930's manor house. The wood in the house is a dark, almost blood-toned red. Nearly a dozen chandeliers hang from the ceiling with an enormous crystal chandelier perched over a black lacquer grand piano. Heavily upholstered furniture fills the space. The back wall is filled with the family's silver and china all elegantly displayed. 

 

The Royal family and their guests are initially seen in formal party attire. King Claudius (Timothy Crowe) and his male guests are in a black cutaway tuxedos. The women, including Queen Gertrude (Cynthia Strickland) are in beautiful gowns, cut of jewel-tone velvets. 

 

In contrast, the servant's costumes are uniforms of stark black and white or drab, gray tweed: all with sensible shoes. Think Upstairs/Downstairs or Gosford Park.

 

The production uses all available space in the theater to accommodate the epic drama. Entire sections of audience seating have been removed to create separate, more intimate settings. The ghost of Hamlet's father (Fred Sullivan, Jr.), bathed in green light, haunts from high atop the theater's catwalk. In the second half of the play a large white silk cloth is pulled over most of the set, signifying the movement of the scene from the manor house to a wide-open, snow-covered field. The scene change, though simple, works well.

 

In the title role, Stephen Thorne plays Hamlet as an under-achieving, procrastinating, lay-about who drinks too much. Mr. Thorne's rendition of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy as an alcohol-induced self-examination was beautifully conceived and acted.

 

Cynthia Stickland's Queen Gertrude conveys a loneliness and brittleness that leave the audience wondering what she knew and when she knew it. Queen Gertrude's death scene was filled with tension and sorrow that moved beyond the fourth wall.

 

As Hamlet's stepfather, The King, Claudius, Timothy Crowe is reserved through much of the play. He plays the role with such reserve as to be as blank slate as the King and reveal nothing of his treachery. 

 

Janice Duclos as Polonius brings appropriate levity to the production. Ms. Duclos has a firm grasp on Shakespeare's wit, wordplay and timing. While appearing demure and reserved, she still hits every comic word, take and double take. Her expressive face and hands increase the impact of each line spoken.

 

The supporting cast is strong; with not a weak link between them. They each showed their acting chops by working with ease through some very complicated dialogue and staging.

 

The fight scene between Laertes (Justin Blanchard) and Hamlet was well choreographed and realistically presented.

 

The weakest scene in the play was with the gravediggers. This is the only time the production went over the line from clever to gimmicky. The gravediggers entered and did their scene as if they were in The Three Stooges' Hamlet. The slapstick comedy seemed jarringly out of place. It seems to me that there is plenty of sly humor in the scene without resorting to whooping and pratfalls for laughs. While watching, I wondered if it was staged that way because Fred Sullivan, Jr. had already been on stage in a few roles and someone thought that it needed to be clear that he was playing an entirely different character.

 

With that exception, the story flowed, with the audience with it, briskly through the two hour and forty-five minute production. It is a very clever interpretation of William Shakespeare's classic revenge drama that is well worth seeing.

 

 

Hamlet has been extended at Trinity Repertory through March 5, 2006.

 

www.trinityrep.com

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