Many reasons exist to recommend the touring Aquila Theatre Company production of Hamlet that Duke Performances brought to Reynolds Industries Theater for a one night stand on Valentine’s Night. It is clear, sharp, and well paced; and it finds much of the humor in the text.
The director, Robert Richmond, moves his cast methodically about the stage. He is aided and abetted by a stunning — though not surprising — scenic design, apparently put together by him and Aquila’s artistic director Peter Meineck, and a lighting design by Meineck.
The actors do not appear to be members of Actors’ Equity Association, and are as non-multi-ethnic as any company I’ve seen in awhile. But they have energy, an understanding of the text (for the most part), and a clarity of speech that is refreshing. Individual performances are strong, including the Gertrude of Natasha Piletich; the Player King of Jay Pinter; and, especially, the Polonius of Andy Patterson.
In fact, part of the problem with this production is that it might better be called Polonius: Father to the Girlfriend of Some Guy Named Hamlet. Patterson, a seasoned veteran with credits across the country, finds Kenneth Branagh-like impishness in the self-regarding Lord Polonius. He takes the audience into his confidence and trusts that we will follow his strained logic in a way that Andrew Schwartz’s Hamlet does not.
Sir Laurence Olivier once wrote that an actor should either play Hamlet at 20 or at 40, but never at 30. I believe he meant that at 20 you might actually be Hamlet and at 40 you might actually understand him. In-between is a nether-era that provides neither the physical hubris nor emotional nakedness of the younger man, nor the pain and understanding of the older man. That seems to be Mr. Schwartz’s problem.
Don’t get me wrong, Andrew Schwartz is graceful, loose, active, and energetic enough to carry off the part. What he lacks, at this point in his career, is the vocal instrument and, frankly, the conviction to fully invest in Hamlet, one way or the other. Is Hamlet crazy or conniving? In Schwartz’s take, he is one and then the other and then both all at once. It isn’t convincing and it isn’t compelling; and, without it, you have, well, a play about Polonius.
There are other concerns I have with this production. I don’t personally like soundtracks unless they are more integrated into the production than is the case with Mr. Richmond’s blaring, vaguely New Age score. Although his picturization is lovely from one moment to the next, one does not necessarily seek loveliness in a staging of Hamlet — or any Shakespeare play, for that matter.
In fact, the director’s scene changes are more compelling by far than anything that happens once the lights come back up and the dialogue begins anew. This is not good. Many of Richmond’s ideas are fun, like the frat boy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern scene (which the Duke University audience recognized immediately and giggled over with delight). So is Richmond’s use of some rolling screens, which he moved around the stage with precision. Also, the mask work in the play-within-the-play threatened for awhile to bring the great work to life. In the insanity scene, Emily Bennett (who has connections to the Carolinas) is quite moving.
But during the arras scene, my major concern with the production was made clear: the production is not surprising. When Hamlet stabbed into one of those wooden, rolling screens, and Polonius died on the other side, the actor gently placed himself down, pushing open one of its doors, but not daring to knock the screen over.
At that point, I wanted to stand up and yell “Knock the damn thing over, already! It’s there to serve you, not the other way around!” I am, perhaps, at a disadvantage here, having recently seen Raleigh-based Bare Theatre’s under-rehearsed, under-funded, and under-cast production at Common Ground Theatre in Durham. Immediately after I saw the Bare Theatre presentation of Hamlet, which featured the petulant Hamlet of Seth Blum (or was it the Hamlet of petulant Seth Blum?) and the most moving insanity scene I’ve witnessed, performed by Heather Hackford, I saw the stunning and wildly over-the-top Rehearsal Hamlet by the Brazilian touring company Cia dos Atores last month at the Public Theatre in New York City.
In the New York production, Hamlet was played by every actor in the cast; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were played, alternately, by two blowup spaceman dolls and two completely naked men (no wait, they kept their caps on, I think); and I’ll be damned if a cow flying across the stage didn’t almost bring me to tears (though I’ve no idea what it had to do with Hamlet).
In the Aquila Theatre Company’s production, there were no flying cows. This company should push itself and its audiences further than this — it has a great young group of actors at its disposal, plus talented directors and designers. I hope Meineck and Richmond will pull out all the stops on their next foray into Shakespeare’s rich world.
Duke Performances: http://www.duke.edu/web/dukeperfs/ [inactive 8/07]. Aquila Theatre Company: http://www.aquilatheatre.com/nowplayinghamlet.html [inactive 5/08].
*Critically-acclaimed actor, director, and playwright Jerome Davis is the founding artistic director of Burning Coal Theatre Company of Raleigh, NC. He previously worked at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI; People’s Light & Theatre Company in Malvern, PA; the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival in Madison; the Phoenix Theatre at SUNY/Purchase; Wellfleet Harbor Actors’ Theatre in Cape Cod, MA; and Columbia University, Soho Rep, New Dramatists, Avalon Rep, and the MINT Theatre in New York City. A native of Murfreesboro, TN, Davis studied in New York with Uta Hagen, Nikos Psacharapolous, and Julie Bovasso. Davis co-wrote The Man Who Tried to Save the World with Brooklyn playwright Floraine Kay. That timely topical drama about the disappearance in Chechnya and presumed murder of legendary disaster-relief worker Fred Cuny, a.k.a. the “Master of Disaster,” premiered at Burning Coal in May 2004.