A triumph

Westerly Shakespeare In the Park's exceptional Hamlet

by Bill Rodriguez

For its 10th annual production, Westerly Shakespeare in the Park has produced an evening befitting the special occasion. Hamlet is certainly Shakespeare's greatest triumph, if not English literature's, melding his most carefully crafted writing with his most trenchant psychological profile. Undaunted, the Wilcox Park troupe and director Harland Meltzer are celebrating the anniversary with an exceptional production.

From Hamlet to Ophelia to many of the supporting roles by the mostly Equity cast, performances are striking and nuanced. Humor is allowed to lighten the atmosphere more than in somber versions of the tragedy, like leavening in a black bread that's also supposed to be good for you.

Hard-bitten theatergoers like myself can come to think of this play, in memory, as particularly modular, recalling a favorite Polonius on one occasion, a particularly successful graveyard scene on another. Of the countless Hamlets I've seen, this one has more than its share of individual performances that I'm sure will stay with me.

Take the prince and his erstwhile sweetheart. David Furr as Hamlet and Jessica Boevers as Ophelia each offer a freshness, an originality to roles that by all rights should be shopworn by now.

Furr presents a Hamlet who seems to be creating himself as he goes along. Since Shakespeare pretty much cues this attitude by Hamlet's ad hoc actions, this shouldn't be surprising. Yet precedent is against Furr, from Nicol Williamson's constantly brooding existential Dane back in the '60s to Mel Gibson's opposite take in the 1990 film, where he is basically a fun-loving frat rat suddenly distracted by a homicide. It's easier for an actor to pipe a single note -- and satisfying for us to recognize the consistency.

It's not that this Hamlet is inconsistent, it's that his character unfolds for us as it does to him. The young man initially is merely resentful and sarcastic over his mother, Gertrude (Marion Markham), marrying his Uncle Claudius (William Whitehead) too soon after his father's death. After the murdered king's ghost begs his son to exact revenge, Furr gives us a Hamlet not triggered into a slow-motion rampage but stunned into responding; we're privy to the confused thoughts he voices, in a tumble of cut-off sentences. Not inevitability, just evolving decisions.

The actor, and director Meltzer, also reminds us that Shakespeare wrote this as the prototype for Black Comedy. Furr underscores a sense of life's absurdity as well as unpredictability in the "Alas, poor Yorick" scene at the graveyard, staring down at the skull of the court jester he loved as a boy. That edge of shrugging, laugh-rather-than-cry humor underlies Hamlet's approach-avoidance conflict with Ophelia as well. Some actors make Hamlet come across as schizophrenic here, as one moment he is joking with her and the next is plain mean. But since Furr is showing us a man who is trying to figure out his own feelings as we watch, in these encounters Hamlet is a work in progress fascinating to behold.

I don't recall seeing a more layered interpretation than Boevers' Ophelia, whose initial reluctance to be an obedient daughter -- when father Polonius tells her to stop seeing the prince -- here is perfectly proportioned to eventually blossom into madness at the whipsawing demands of duty and desire. Ophelia is often a one-dimensional victim, too timid to live. Here we can detect so much internal life that the mad scene, where she distributes flowers and herbs like a suicide's potlatch, has our hearts break from understanding as much as from pathos.

Most of the supporting actors contribute skillfully. Ed Franklin gives us a novel Polonius, making his advice speech to son Laertes (Christopher Baker) -- "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" -- wise instead of sententious, letting the old man's foolish side emerge only under social pressure. As a gravedigger, Norman Bell is entertaining company with able straight man Robert Bowen Jr. However, Whitehead is an unfathomable Claudius, spiritless through even the miscreant's remorse soliloquy, letting the crucial role come alive only toward the end.

The swordplay choreography by Phillip Leipf Jr. is first-rate, brisk without being inappropriately showy. Lighting design by Brian Aldous has dramatic side lights hidden in two "stone" columns of Eric Renschler's set. Loren Bevans costume design is as opulent as Jeff Shea's music design, reserved for highly charged emotional scenes, is subtle.

The outdoor event is produced annually by the currently homeless Colonial Theatre. The 20,000 audience members expected are bound to, once again, look forward to returning during its next decade.

Hamlet is presented by Westerly Shakespeare in the Park through August 5.