George  Weinberg-Harter

San Diego Arts

"Hamlet" at the Old Globe

Now Could I Drink Hot Blood
By George  Weinberg-Harter
Posted on Thu, Jul 5th, 2007
Last updated Thu, Jul 5th, 2007

Shakespeare’s plays "Hamlet" and "Titus Andronicus" stand at two extremes in the Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy genre. "Titus" is a shockingly rough and gruesome story of rape, dismemberment, mutilation, cannibalism, blood and guts. Adults only. "Hamlet," on the other hand, is considered a refined and poetic classic, suitable for schoolchildren and eggheads. And although about eight characters die in "Hamlet," most of them do so either offstage, accidentally, or in a fair fight. (Old Hamlet’s death is the most gruesome: poison poured in his earhole. But that murder takes place before the play starts and is excruciatingly described only after the fact.)

Darko Tresnjak, artistic director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival, staged a memorable "Titus Andronicus" for the festival last year, and "Hamlet" for this summer’s repertory season. Tresnjak’s grotesque imagination and astonishing inventiveness disarmed (so to speak) and distanced the almost surreal violence of "Titus," finding visual metaphors for gore and giving weirdly comic twists to acts of rebarbative violence. Blood became scarlet glitter or crimson fans. And the scene where the hapless Lavinia is waylaid, ravished, and maimed in the woods was prefaced by a recording of "The Teddy Bears’ Picnic." Audiences and critics (not always in perfect accord) seemed to love it. And "Titus," it may be noted, is certainly no more lurid and ghastly than a great deal of popular cinema. As the poet Howard Moss wrote, "Make the blood flow, make the motive muddy:/There’s a little death in every body."

This year Tresnjak’s "Hamlet" is not so distanced and abstracted as his "Titus" was, nor does it need to be. Conservatively set amid the dark Tudor woodwork of Ralph Funicello’s scenic design (which must serve all three plays of the festival) and with players meticulously costumed by Robert Morgan in sumptuous English Renaissance finery and cartwheel ruffs contemporary with the first performances and publication of the play (circa 1598 to 1603), the production maintains a generally realistic style (insofar as that be possible for a quasi-historical ghost story in dramatic verse and prose). Yet Tresnjak does again indulge here and there in ingenious bits of stylized gore suitable to a tale so enmeshed in murder, manslaughter, executions and filial vengeance.

Lukas Hall makes an attractive and sympathetic Prince Hamlet, playing the role with verbal dexterity and with immense vitality after the spectral appearance of his murdered father electrifies Hamlet out of mournful paranoid melancholy into manic (if not entirely direct) action. Hall dashes athletically about the big outdoor stage with mad (though methodic) vigor.

Bruce Turk plays the double role of Hamlet’s wicked Uncle Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet’s father, whom Claudius killed with that earhole poison in order to usurp crown and wife. (This doubling is sometimes done, even though Hamlet demonstrates to his mother with a portrait that the brothers were not similar in appearance.) Turk’s Ghost is a stationary figure, like a seated statue that rises from below on an elevator, but his cry of "O horrible!" is heartrending enough to cause Hamlet to grasp his father’s dead hand in comfort. Turk’s King Claudius is genial, slimy, and suitably commanding. And Turk, who is very good at twisted mental states (such as his memorably irrational Leontes in "The Winter’s Tale" seen here previously) gives a particularly tense and intimate performance of Claudius’ guilty soliloquy ("O, my offense is rank.").

This is Shakespeare’s longest play, and is supposed to run around four hours if uncut. It has indeed been judiciously trimmed for this production, but still clocks in at about three and a half hours anyway – perhaps because of interesting extra material added from the so-called "bad quarto" (the first published edition, which differs in many radical ways from later texts). Lovers of Shakespeare intimate with the play may suddenly realize that favorite lines have gone missing, but will perhaps also be surprised to hear some rather unfamiliar bits too. Many necessary questions of the play that are sometimes sacrificed in more radical cuttings remain for fuller consideration, or have been augmented to some advantage. Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude (in a strong performance by Celeste Ciulla) is shown to gain fuller understanding of the dire situation thanks to her conversation (inserted from that First Quarto) with Hamlet’s best friend Horatio (Ryan Quinn), wherein she learns of Claudius’ foiled plan to have Hamlet executed in England. This changes much. Thereafter, in Ciulla’s performance, she turns notably cold towards Claudius. And Gertrude’s downing of the poisoned wine, meant for her son, is now clearly seen to be a noble suicide, for which her line "My lord, I pray you pardon me," is turned into an actual prayer to heaven for forgiveness for the canonical sin of self-slaughter. Cuilla’s Queen Gertrude thus becomes more serious and sober than sometimes portrayed.

Charles Janasz’s excellent Polonius, while retaining the script’s delineation of the character as a sententious windbag, is a fully rounded person with whom one can feel some sympathy – especially when Hamlet mistakenly and somewhat hysterically skewers him behind the curtain in the bedroom scene. Polonius’ daughter Ophelia (Joy Farmer-Clary), finally driven round the twist by her dad’s death (among other reasons) shows unexpected grit in her flowery songful hebephrenic mad scene. Farmer-Clary’s Ophelia, who hitherto seemed wispy and cringing, becomes bold and unruly in her dementia, her "Goodnight, sweet ladies" downright bitter and defiant. And Corey Sorenson’s Laertes (surviving member of the Polonius family – though not for long) works himself into a very believably griefstricken rage, particularly over Hamlet’s tasteless behavior (for which Hamlet later rightly apologizes) at Ophelia’s burial ("This is I, Hamlet the Dane!").

Some Tresnjak touches of the sanguinary sort much seen in "Titus" include a very bloodstained spitting of Polonius though the eye, and, more schematic, the spewing of a bloodred silken sheet from the Player King’s head in the play-within-a-play. Diaphanous and billowing, it expands nightmarishly in front of the horrified Claudius to engulf and cover the entire stage, an objective correlative of his rank offense and primal curse. And then, as Claudius flees ("Give me some light! Away!"), the all-enveloping red cloth is whipped away, to a great sucking sound, revealing just the satisfied and justified Hamlet and Horatio, now convinced of the King’s guilt.

Yet another and odder such touch involves the supererogatory execution of Osric (Chris Bresky), the affected courtier who referees the duel between Hamlet and Laertes. No one ever seems to much like the unfortunate and much-mocked Osric, whose main offense, in the script, is just being an officious prat. Under Tresnjak's direction, when the Norwegian invader Prince Fortinbras (James Knight) shows up at the play’s conclusion to take over the government of Denmark (all other apparent candidates for the throne lying dead), Osric fawns before the new king, for which the brutal Fortinbras (which literally means "strong arm") gratuitously breaks his neck. Nobody loves poor Osric. (In Kenneth Branagh’s film "Hamlet," Osric is also killed by the invading Fortinbrasistas.) But does he deserve to die for toadyism? (It could be worse though. In one famous modernized "Hamlet," Fortinbras had Horatio machinegunned at the final line: "Go bid the soldiers shoot.")

On opening night, Tresnjak interrupted the curtain calls to give a special tribute to Jonathan McMurtry, senior member of the cast, who had just performed affectingly as the 1^st Player and with his own special brand of charming drollery as the 1^st Gravedigger. This, Tresnjak informed the audience, was not only McMurtry’s 200^th role at the Old Globe, where he has performed since 1961, but his 70^th birthday as well. Confetti showered from above and we all sang "Happy Birthday to You!" Many happy returns, Jon!

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM PAGE ONE

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM PAGE TWO

About the author: George Weinberg-Harter George Weinberg-Harter has been active in San Diego theatre since childhood, appearing in many local stage productions as well as doing graphic art for them. He has helped start theatre companies, authored and co-authored a number of plays produced locally and is a co-founder of the Fellow Calligraphers of San Diego. He is a member of the Actors Alliance of San Diego, the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, and the San Diego Press Club, which has presented him with its 2007 First Place Excellence in Journalism Award for Drawing or Illustration.
More by this author.

Subscribe to Arts

 · 

Comments

Posted by Walter Ritter	Thu, Jul 5th, 2007
This is a particularly enjoyable and informative critique that makes me want to see this production of Hamlet very much. In case I don't, though, at least I will have read a thoughtful review. I am disappointed in one thing: I had to look up only one word in the dictionary, hebephrenic. I usually have to look up a handful at least. And, by golly, the writer used this polysyllabic oddity perfectly. Is there another single word that better describes Ophelia's behavior? I do not know it.

(1)sandiego.com, Inc. invites comments in which readers can respond freely and anonymously if they wish. Comments submitted by readers will be rejected that are deemed by the editors to be damaging to the future of this web site.
(2)Comparison is made from the IP Address identity of the computer placing the posts. Some networks share these addresses between users.