Oscar Isaac
Photo credit: Carol Rosegg
Plenty of characters die in
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” but plenty of them live long enough to make us
laugh at their misfortunes, smile at their misguided assumptions, and maybe
even smirk at their misplaced loyalties in controversial director Sam Gold’s
vision/version of this great tragedy. I think we can agree that this is not the
way the play is generally expected to hit you. In some ways, “Hamlet” has always
been an entertainment.
As an entertainment, the
production now at the Public Theater relies heavily on Gold’s presumption that
the audience comes prepared with knowledge of what is going on or what is
supposed to be going on in the rotten state of Denmark. It worked fine enough
for me as well presumably for the large group of theater students from Las
Vegas (I asked an usher) who were there at the performance I attended to primarily
see film and TV star Oscar Isaac give what actually turned out to be a terrific
portrayal of the famously melancholy Dane. Running just under four hours
including two intermissions, this “Hamlet” scores heavily with its theatrical
pretentions and much less so with its ability to involve us emotionally.
Gold starts the play with the
audience in the dark (realistically not metaphorically) as he also did with his
recent mesmerizing staging of “Othello,” as we simply listen to the opening
scene in which appears the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father (Ritchie Coster.) Coster
returns not only as the ghost but as the dead king who is placed on a folding
table atop a pile of artificial flowers. Coster also plays most wily, although
with the same visible body tattoos, the dastardly Uncle Claudius, who has
hurriedly married Hamlet’s duplicitous mother Gertrude (passively played by Charlayne
Woodard.)
Notwithstanding the growing
trend with actors to not conceal body art (an unfortunate trend), the outer
attire designed by Kaye Voyce for Hamlet and Ophelia (Gayle Rankin) is
distractingly faux funk. And I’m not particularly taken by Isaac parading
around for much of the play in a black t-shirt and color-coordinated undershorts.
My reaction to Rankin’s bi-polar performance is further compromised by her unattractively
braided hair. For some unfathomable reason, Gold has made Ophelia, as he did his
also braided Desdemona in “Othello,” appear as unattractive as possible. Most clever conceits in the play are
having Ophelia sing her mad scene, drown herself with a shower hose dragged
from the toilet and then throw herself into the grave with Polonius. What a
stunner to see them arise side by side having morphed into the two gabby gravediggers.
This tragi-comical diversion works perfectly in abetting Gold’s imaginatively
conveyed perversity.
More unseemly than untimely
is the curious use of a toilet metaphorically as a throne for Polonius (a wonderfully
wry Peter Friedman.) He gets a laugh as does Hamlet who delivers lines with a paper
toilet seat hung around his neck. It’s a wonder, nevertheless, that all of Hamlet’s lines ring out with an
impressive clarity of thought and execution. Isaac’s exquisite phrasing of the
famous soliloquies - “To be or not to be,” “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh
would melt” - is palpable and made extremely personal.
To exhibit true and terrifying
madness amidst the free-wheeling wackiness of Gold’s variations on Shakespeare’s
play probably wasn’t such a stretch for the actor who rose to fame in films “Inside
Llewyn Davis” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Standout support comes from
Anatol Usef as Laertes, Keegan-Michael Key expertly playing both Horatio and with
comical panache the Player King. Perhaps we are meant to have a good time at
"Hamlet" knowing as we do that the point, even when its dipped in poison, is
deconstruction.
Review by Simon Saltzman
based on performance July 23.
Performances through
September 3, 2017
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