Review: SHAKESPEARE: DRUM & COLOURS - HAMLET from Seattle Shakespeare Company

Who? What? Where? Why? These are the questions I wish the current production of "Hamlet" from Seattle Shakespeare Company had been able to answer but sadly did not. As part of their "Drum & Colours" series, which muddied things even more, this "Hamlet" lacked pacing, intent, interesting or effective staging, and coherence, making this one of the worst productions I've ever seen. I doubt I need to explain to you the story of "Hamlet", the mad Prince, so we'll just get right to the unanswered questions.

Who? Who were these characters that they were trying to convey and who were they talking to? The usually amazing Nike Imoru starred as the titular Dane and was one of the reasons I was so excited for this production. But as amazing as she normally is, is how lackluster her performance here was. I didn't feel much intention from her at all in the role. She seemed to be wandering the stage in search of something to care about and never found it. Plus, for a prince that goes mad, I didn't find much madness here. When he's supposed to be fully gone and screaming at Ophelia (played by MJ Daly) I just felt he wanted to break up with her so he was being a jerk hoping she would leave.

The rest of the cast seemed equally lost in finding a hook into their characters as each felt they were in a different show. Bob Williams played Polonius as a comical buffoon. Armando Durán and Kathy Hsieh as a couple had the chemistry of two people who just met before going on stage and were just told what the story was. Rachel Guyer-Mafune (one of my favorite actors in town) played Horatio like she was in love with Hamlet. Um, ok. And Arjun Pande and Ayo Tushinde (two more reasons I was looking forward to this one) played Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as drunkards with, for some reason, Brooklyn dialects (even though no one else in the show was doing anything close). The two saving graces were Daly as Ophelia and Tushinde as Laertes who had a firm grasp on what these characters were all about. And Ophelia's breakdown and Laertes subsequent rage were palpable. But too little for the rest of the show which just sat there.

What? What were your intentions here? What do these characters want? I had no idea. Unlike Seattle Shakes' 2010 "Hamlet", which I still view as the best "Hamlet" and one of the best plays I've seen, the cast here seemed to be floundering to convey their intent through all the iambic pentameter. They said the pretty words but didn't get across the meaning. The final nail in this coffin came when I was leaving the theater after this two hour, no intermission show, and I heard a father ask his teenage daughter what she thought. "It was interesting", she replied. He then asked, "Did you get it all?" To which she replied, "Not really." That pretty much says it all.

Where? This production, like their next one in the "Drum & Colours" series is set in the 1930's as if it were a WPA program. This locale lent nothing to the piece other than to explain why it might be an all POC troupe. Not sure why they would need to explain that. Just do it. In fact, the new locale muddied things as they were all dressed in 30's esque, tattered street clothes. I assume to reflect the bare bones, down on their luck, nature of it all. But then the "players" within the play showed up in a zoot suit and fancy flapper dress. So why were they dressed nicer than the royalty?

If that wasn't enough, the staging from director Juan A Mas lacked any sense of location or purpose. He had Ophelia dancing around on a bench but, where was that? He had other actors show up behind Hamlet with sheets of corrugated metal to form a kind of wall when he confronted the ghost, but why? And speaking of the ghost, he presented the ghost as multiple people so he could pop up in various places but then had Duran voice him on mic off stage. But he kept straying from the mic and so his volume kept dropping in and out. And my least favorite moment, when Polonius hid behind a piece of burlap (indicating the curtains or something) and they shone a light behind him when he was stabbed to project a shadow of the moment. But the light was off its mark or Williams was, and it just ending up as a big shadow blob.

Why? This all comes down to why were they there? To entertain? Not a lot as I saw several people flipping through their programs. Not surprising as the pacing of the show, or lack thereof made for a plodding evening filled with moments of nothing happening on stage but overblown introspection.

Seattle Shakes has given me my favorite evening of "Hamlet" and now they've given me my least favorite, and I would like this evening back. And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give Seattle Shakespeare Company's production of "Shakespeare: Drum and Colours - Hamlet" a very disappointed NAH. I just hope next week's "As You Like It" can manage a better time.

"Shakespeare: Drum and Colours - Hamlet" from Seattle Shakespeare Company performs at the Center House Theatre through March 13th. For tickets or information visit them online at www.seattleshakespeare.org.

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