AMK's Journal

My season subscription ends with Hamlet, a modern-dress production Hamlet was played by Jeffrey Carlson, who played the role very young and rather manic. Carlson is actually in his early thirties, and it's a mark of his skill that Hamlet did seem much younger -- practically like a teenager at times. But I'm not sure that the choice of such a manic Hamlet really worked -- it did add an edge of serious insanity to some scenes, but the soliloquies seemed more petulant than anything else. This was disappointing, and the good supporting scenes weren't enough to make up for it.

Michelle Beck played Ophelia, and did it pretty well; her performance in the "get thee to a nunnery" scene was especially effective and upsetting. My favorite actor was Robert Cuccioli, who played Claudius with weight and dignity; I'd like to see him again. I also really liked Ted van Griethuysen in his small character roles (the Ghost, the Player King, and the Southern-accented First Gravedigger). The play-within-the-play was done Kabuki-style, and I really liked it; being so stylized and so different from the rest of the staging, the inserted play seemed like an interlude from a different world.

Best bit of modernization: in her first scene, Polonius tells Ophelia "If with too credent ear you list his songs..." Shakespeare meant "listen", but the director had Ophelia listening to an iPod at the beginning of the scene... making "list" seem exactly the right meaning. (I wonder what would be on Hamlet's playlist?) There were also some nods to Stoppard's R&G Are Dead; very cute!