New Audience Production of “Hamlet” at the Duke is ‘Marked’ by Excisions, Scene Shuffling and a ‘Lame Prince’

 

by Sam Juliano

With so many productions of Hamlet being produced on stages worldwide, and with a number of others permanently captured on film (many available on DVD), it’s little wonder that  a minimalist transcription with contemporary garb is hardly a cause for celebration.  In fact the new three hour and forty minute production from the Theater for a New Audience Company, isn’t for patrons hoping for a faithful and unabridged reading of what is generally acknowledge as the greatest play ever written.  As such, it’s enigmatic, philosophical and contemplative central character provides an actor with the greatest role in the theatre.  A weak Hamlet invariably dooms the staging he appears in, and such is the case with a company who just a few weeks ago dazzled the theater world with an extraordinarily well-acted version of Othello, which unlike the current staging boasted a superlative turn in the title role.    

The Hamlet of this new staging, directed by David Esbjornson, is Christian Camargo, a tall and lanky actor with substantial Shakespearean training, a previous role in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, and a stint on a television series, Dexter.  The rather tall Camargo delivers apathetic and dispassionate readings of the four famed soliloquies, beginning with “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” and continuing with “To be or not to be/That is the question.”  Even the trademark ‘brooding introspection’ that customarily informs this most famous of all roles is delivered in unadorned monotone.  Yet Camargo has some admirers, not the least of which is none other than the veteran New York Times theatre critic Christopher Isherwood, who calls Camargo “tremendously gifted” and asserts that he “nails just about everything.”  He gushes further by saying that “the poetry sings softly and the torment of a divided soul is made achingly clear.  With his pale skin, black hair and angular features, Mr. camargo even looks as if he were born to play the role.  He’d seem just right staring meaningfully from a Victorian oil painting, skull in hand.”  With all due respect to Mr. Isherwood, I think his grandstanding on Camargo diminishes both the demands and complexity of the role, which has been flubbed by many better actors than Mr. Camargo.  The only time I believed I was witnessing a Hamlet of some substance was when the prince advised the visiting players to speak their speeches “trippingly on the tongue.”       Esbjornson doesn’t help matters with an arbitrary re-arrangement of scenes, and liberal abridgement of the text, which often confuses even the play’s most avid admirers.  Even the ‘untouchable’ like the play’s justly famous opening line “Who’s there?” demanded by one castle guard to another is done after a few other scenes, is moved back, compromising the sense of urgency so readily established at the play’s beginning.  The director also uses the frozen technique’ (called ‘innovation’ by Isherwood) where players who speak their lines and then finish remain on the stage and freeze while others take the forefront and interact.  It’s basically the equivalent of two scenes being spliced together movie-style, that provide the option of cutting from one to the other.  It provides some textual overlap, but it’s a rather hokey device, and Hamlet is seen sooner than he actually appears in the play.   The argument that the choice to utilize two intermissions is wise because it keeps the pace steady and our attentions sharpened couldn’t be further from the truth.  Any intermission is intrusive and it’s a damaging break in focus that needs to be re-established.  Hamlet, which is one of the Bard’s longest plays does require one intermission, but the argument that a failure to provide the double break makes for an first act endurance test flies in the face of the notion that this is one of the most fascinating works of theatre and literature.  It speaks for itself and needs no compromising.     

A play with a bad Hamlet, can only be made worse with a bad Ophelia, and sadly that is the case here with Jennifer Ikeda, who has all the charm and impending madness as a high school drama club actress, with a penchant for ‘gee-whiz’ histrionics.  Her ‘descent’ induces far more laughter than horror.  The admittedly venerable actor Alvin Epstein is an appealing presence, but like the Iago, Ned Eisenberg, in the Othello production, he is merely adequate.  Similarly, both the Claudius, Casey Biggs, and the Gertrude, Alyssa Bresnahan, are pedestrian in their roles, (Bresnahan’s tender looks are wholly fraudulent) while the Laertes, Graham Hamilton is marginally more effective.  Only Tom Hammond as a sympathetic Horatio and Jonathan Fried as Hamlet’s father’s Ghost are wholly effective with the latter delivering what everyone knows are among the best lines in the play.  Lighting designer Marcus Doshi uses a blue grid projection on a black floor, and Fried’s hair is dusted white, with an amplified volume that sounds somewhat like the Wizard of Oz speaking with the loud amplification behind the curtain.      

At the end of day one can’t be willing to accept any production of this singular masterpiece that doesn’t embrace both fidelity to the material and a high standard of execution.  The company adhered to those vital components with the Othello production, but failed miserably with Hamlet.  

     Note:  I saw ‘Hamlet’ on Saturday, March 28th at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street with Lucille and Broadway Bob.  We stopped at a dinner pub beforehand, where Lucille had shepherd’s pie, Bob a cheeseburger deluxe and I a roasted half chicken with French onion soup.  We found parking, but needed to walked eight long blocks.