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I Am Hamlet
By William Shakespeare
Adapted and directed by Tony Lewis
MidTangent Productions
at the Oracle Theater
3809 N. Broadway, Chicago
Runs February 15 - March 11, 2007
Thurs-Sat 8pm, Sun 6pm
Tickets $20 - $15 Students/Industry
Call:1-800 595 4849
www.myspace.com/midtangent
Runs: 1 hour 55 minutes
Adaptation of Hamlet uses dance choreography and mask to uncover layers of evil in Denmark.
The inventive and effective choreography in this MidTangent production of “Hamlet” does so much for the concept here that it could have used more of it. In this adaptation the play-text is abbreviated so that dance and movement perform a lot of the narrative duty: and the play is at its best when they are on display.
The other interesting choice here is to use multiple actors for each part of the central character triangle of Hamlet, Ophelia and Laertes. Hamlet is tripled. There is a central Hamlet who is relentlessly analyzed by his two other selves. One (Aaron Michael Adamkiewicz) is indecisive, peevish and nearly hysterical at times; the other (Kelly Yacono) is grim, fatal and uncompromising. What happens is that Hamlet’s progress is ingeniously examined in pathological detail. The famous soul-searching monologues are expanded into a vivid argument on the topic of whether and when to commit murder.
Ophelia and her brother Laertes are doubled by their instinctive ‘others’, who do not speak, only shriek, snort, or gasp like forces of nature. They shadow them in pantomime, expressing with their bodies what they would be in life but cannot because their existence has become sick from the treachery that surrounds them.
There is plenty of pathology to go around in this one. From early in the play the dancing is used to let it out that there is an incestuous dynamic between Laertes and Ophelia; that Ophelia’s locked-up sexuality is insoluble for Hamlet. That the pervasive evil of Claudius’ regicide has set the once happy kingdom into a downward spiral is given fullest effect upon the battered psyches of the three lost youth.
Stephen Louis Grush, as the central Hamlet, does find the music in Shakespeare’s poetry, as others do at times. Paige Smith as the Gravedigger brings us to the language (more so than his longer turn as Polonius). Lara Hossalla (Ophelia) is a standout dancer, and Alyssa Larsen (Ophelia) has a strong presence coupled with articulate movement. Steven Figg found the right level for his craven and duplicitous Guildenstern.
However, what works less well is the straight-up performance of this adaptation of the text. I could have been content to see a dance version of the entire play. When it seemed as though a balance between the poetry and the movement was about to occur, the performance would resolve into the speaking drama and that is when it had some difficulty finding the right tempo to get that Shakespeare to really sing.
Deserving particular attention for the direction and choreography by Tony Lewis was the mummer’s play – the play-within-the-play where Hamlet has coached his father’s murder to be performed for Claudius and Gertrude. The masks are doubly grotesque; the dance of Queen Gertrude (Carrie Ferguson) and the brothers (Aaron Pozdol and Kary Markey), ending with the murder in the orchard, is to a delight of a ballad by Rufus Wainwright. Balletic yet jerky, sweet and deadly, it had an imbecilic dignity (pointing at Claudius) that defied the term parody. It was a superb and surprising scene in an uneven but worthwhile play.
Recommended
Warren Easton
tuinheks@sbcglobal.net for comments
Date Reviewed: February 23, 2007
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