Reviewed
by David Spencer
I'm sure it has happened dozens, nay hundreds, nay thousands of times since Shakespeare first wrote the particular group of his plays that have since never been out of production, but I actually can't recall ever having seen it before, not to this degree, and of course, if it's new for you, that's all the new you need, and what I'm referring to is this:
There is a perfectly brilliant, perhaps career-turning, certainly role-defining Hamlet in the current CSC production of the play named for the Melancholy Dane, as performed by Michael Cumpsty. But in the gimmicked-up production directed by Brian Kulick, that Hamlet is, in a figurative sense, screaming to be let out. (There is screaming that is not so figurative too, but we'll get to that.)
Mr. Kulick has always tended to favor setting his Shakespeare in modern dress Never-Never lands, where contemporary physical/prop references exist side by side with Elizabethan conventions and modes of battle such as swordplay; so it is no surprise that his "Hamlet" is similarly tricked up (the seeming streamlining of the stark physical production is deceptive). What once was an interesting and appropriate palate-choice for a few productions (seen via The New York Shakespeare Festival at the Public and the Delacorte), or maybe just a relatively new voice giving fresh vent to a fresh mindset, may well be deteriorating into a familiar bag of tricks; and Mr. Kulick has been to this "well" before. Only this time he's added self-conscious novelty to his stylistic signatures.
For the first five minutes, the audience is not seated, but made to stand in a crowd on the stage area, which is a white box constructed within a black box space, surrounded on three sides by seating units. The seats on the side are visible through long rectangular windows; the principal seats out front are blocked off until the white wall concealing them is lifted, whereupon the first ghost-sighting scene happens in and among the empty rows, and eventually spills into the mass of patrons, as the castle patrolmen chase the ghost onto the stage and through the crowd. When the scene is over, an announcement is made that patrons may now take their seats. Since CSC offers only "festival" seating (no assigned seats), only those of us lucky enough to have designated critics' or subscriber seats actually know where we're going. The rest of the patrons must perforce scramble to sit where they can, which occasionally separates fellow travelers and deprives early birds of the choice that's morally theirs for showing up first. The side rows are not preferable.
Anyway, once it starts, the bad guys wear white, the good guys (well, Hamlet's allies) wear black (the troupe of actors hired to re-enact the King's murder wear red; symbolism much?) and with a lot of multiple role playing, not including our essential lead performers, the story unfolds against a paper wall. This wall, virtually telegraphing all the director's punches, just begs to be graffiti'd, slashed and stabbed (you just wait for the body of the slain Polonius to fall through it, and sure enough), and eventually ripped away. The only thing not predictable was the spray paint used to write the graffiti. But we might have known...
The cast ranges from reliably sufficient unto the task (the ubiquitous Herb Foster's Polonius), to not quite centered (Kellie Overby's Ophelia), to unfazedly bent on performing the play accurately (the admirable Caroline Lagerfelt's Gertrude), to kind of interesting (Karl Kenzler's Laertes). There doesn't seem to be much of a thread to provide the guidance of unified vision.
And nowhere is this more in evidence than with the Claudius of Robert Dorfman, who plays the King like a middle aged nellie queen. Lest that sound like an attempt at clever juxtaposition (king/queen), I promise you, that's the furthest thing from my mind -- I mean it quite literally. Mr. Dorfman shrieks, prances and limp-wrists his way through the proceedings, to the point where my companion said, "It's like watching Claudius played by Roger DeBris!" [DeBris is the gay director in The Producers.] I can only fault Dorfman for not doing it well enough: the archetype is unmistakable, but the indicia seem scattershot, and when he yells, he loses vocal control such that he flips into incomprehensibility; but as for the concept itself -- that has to have been devised, or at the very least encouraged by Kulick. No actor commits to a choice that screwy without the encouragement of his director.
So it's something of a miracle that, as I say, Michael Cumpsty's Hamlet manages to scythe through this thing almost unscathed. To be sure, he is generous to his follow performers and fully supports the cracked and fractured gestalt as best he can...but he maintains his inner integrity throughout. This is a virile, witty and driven Dane, and an unusually clear one. Neither mad nor feigning madness, the turbulence of his mental state increases with each backfire, each death he never intended on the path to his revenge, as if he must get to the final act as justification to prevent madness, lest the weight of his own morality catch up with and stagger him. It's as if he is trying to outpace his own soul.
If you can bear the production, he's well worth the effort.
Would that all the rest were silence...