Arriving at Shakespeare on the Lawn's production of Hamlet and eyeing the stage, it's immediately obvious that this is a big departure from standard Shakespearian stagings: pedantically Elizabethan, prudently period or tediously modern. None of that here.
Gone are the black curtains and moody sets of the troupe's previous efforts, and in their place we have a brilliantly, almost gaudily painted Arabian harem. The production manages, in its best moments, to remove Hamlet from the realm of Shakespeariana, which is reason enough to see SOTL's production in spite of its failings.
A lot of changes have been made to the script here. Besides the play's setting in "fairy-time Arabia," the violent and incestuous overtones of the piece (and not just those involving actual violence or incest, either) have been played up. Also, Hamlet's tendency to introspection ("meta-theatre" is the trendy term) has been highlighted, allegedly, by the addition of dance numbers between some of the scenes instead of standard set changes. But this seemed singularly ineffective at the dress rehearsal -- with alterations as profound as those here, the show has to win and lose by token of how well it removes itself from the expected, and the dances felt old-hat.
"Fairy-time Arabia" happens to be outside of real, chronological time, with a strong Thousand and One Nights influence -- at least in principle. The unusual staging and costuming aim to recreate for a modern audience what the setting in Denmark presumably did for Shakespeare's original listeners: a suggestion of opulence and decadence.
Balancing this image of the rich Orient, though, is the lens of modernism that is almost obligatory these days when doing something avant-garde with Shakespeare. Characters from outside Denmark's central sphere are arrayed in varying degrees of modernity. Laertes, while definitely more western than the King and Queen or the set, is not so modern as to be jarring; but Hamlet's schoolmates, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are dressed in what appears to be a conscious parody of modern college students. The combination, while bizarre, is valid. The two themes temper each other, and the production feels more relevant than one expects from such trendily misplaced Shakespeare. It fits, weirdly.
The play is interpreted almost as violently as possible: At every opportunity when a shove, grab or seduction would fit the text, there's one to be found. While this greatly enhances some of the scenes of madness -- it was delightful, for example, to see Hamlet abuse poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern -- in many other cases it seems a copout from more complex characterization.
Often too, the high physical energy of the play seems to have been mis-channeled into the vocal expression, and lines that should be delivered with high emotion are screamed instead. These are some of our language's most moving phrases, people. You don't have to shout to be expressive.
The show's most prevalent problem, though, was the reverse: inaudibility. Too many of the characters simply could not be heard. This was especially distressing because some of the better, more felt and more interesting performances, like charmingly doddering Polonius, were obviously being lost because they were not loud enough. This is an easy enough flaw to correct and hopefully will be patched up by opening night -- if not, good luck to anyone who hasn't seen Hamlet before.
More dangerously, often the actors slipped into "Shakespearification," that is, into recitation of lines in perfect pentameter with little regard for their sense, so that the words become a disorganized mush of consonants and vowels. While this never occurred on any crucial lines, it happened often enough, especially in the speeches of Claudius and sober Hamlet, to weaken the production's energy.
Hamlet was at his strongest when "mad." When "sane," especially during the first act, he seemed a bit dry and recitative, but a little dose of craziness helped the rest of his performance tremendously, and even his later sane scenes improved some. You can tell the actor is having fun being loony, though, and it's infectious.
Gertrude, while a bit low in one or two places, was on the whole the strongest and most convincing characterization. Her confidence and natural manner did a lot to hold up the production -- several characters improved visibly after their interactions with her.
As the play gained momentum, it won its most important victory: It evoked the sense of Hamlet and Gertrude as simply a son and his mother, and hit the balance between Mythic Time and Relevant Time. Major kudos for that.
Inevitably people will come to Hamlet already invested in it. We who love the story of this unplayable play are bound to have mixed feelings about its performance. At its worst, SOTL's show felt a bit forced and unfelt. When it succeeded, though, it managed to pull away some of the curtain of formality that often surrounds Shakespeare. In the cast's best moments, I didn't feel like I was watching Shakespeare, I felt like I was just watching Hamlet; and despite the show's other weaknesses, that's a remarkable thing to have pulled off.See Hamlet for free this Fri. & Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at the Student Activities Building.
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