Theatre: Titan Theatre Company’s Hamlet
It’s hard to do Hamlet.
Not only is the text expansive and emotionally complex, but the title’s iconic place in the culture carries with it unreasonable expectations, overbearing precedent, and insidious overfamiliarity. Fortunately, in the Titan Theatre Company’s current production, director Lenny Banovez doesn’t try to “do Hamlet.” Instead, he delves into the well-known script to discover the play hiding beneath, and works with a top-notch cast to create something both faithful to the text and freshly original at the same time. It was the best production of Hamlet I have ever seen.
The title character was played by Laura Frye. Her Hamlet’s melancholy was mixed with a healthy dose of choler as well. The result was a passionate intensity that heightened the conflict of each scene and created a riveting experience in the theatre. One of the remarkable features of Hamlet is how each scene is a mini-masterpiece in itself. But this production understood how all of the pieces fit together, and I never felt like I was watching a cliché. Frye’s earnest and energetic performance contributed to that a great deal.
I should disclose at this point that I had friends in the cast. I’ve known Annalisa Loeffler (Gertrude) for many years, and I met Michael Selkirk (Claudius) when the two of them performed in The Winter’s Tale a few years ago. So when I tell you they were both electrifying in their roles, you are free to factor in my bias. But like many New Yorkers with theatrical connections, I frequently see friends in all kinds of productions, and they don’t all get that from me, so I’ll just leave it there. I’ll also add that the cast was phenomenal across the board. Hamlet carries the show, but can’t do it alone, and the scene work is what elevated the play from a just another great performance to something truly sublime.
I hadn’t expected any of this when I sat down. I knew the production would be good, and I looked forward to hearing some talented actors perform Shakespeare. As I’ve discussed before, this has a physical effect on my brain, and actually leads to a kind of a high. And indeed, when the court filed in and Selkirk took over the stage with his opening Claudius speech, I was drawn in immediately. The theatre was a small black box, and I was in the front row, so it was an immersive experience from the start. And during the first stretch of the play, through intermission, and well into Act III, I enjoyed the production as I would any well done performance of Shakespeare.
It was somewhere around the closet scene that my world started to tilt. Frye and Loeffler painted each moment with all of the colors in the scene’s palette: rage, disgust, shame, regret. And I found myself feeling the fear and pity that Aristotle associated with the dramatic tragedy.
It just kept getting worse from there. Andrew Garrett played Laertes in his return to Denmark with a strong desire for vengeance, but left himself room for what happens next. Laura Menzie enters as Ophelia, and her mad scene almost had me in tears. Not only was her performance of a difficult scene powerfully empathetic and believable, but Garrett’s reactions built the horror of the scene without drawing focus away from her. By raising the stakes, they keep the momentum of the dramatic action. Menzie and Garrett had been so charming and likeable in their earlier scene together (along with the brilliantly comic Robert Meksin as Polonious, who stole every scene he was in) that when we see the unravelling of their family, we feel the full tragic force of their downfall. And when Gertrude delivers the news that Ophelia has died (Loeffler’s finest moment), Garrett’s reaction makes us understand in our bones that Hamlet is now in serious danger. I was shaking.
And then out comes T. Stacy Hicks in an inspired turn as the Gravedigger, and we have permission to laugh again. Shakespeare sure did know his craft.
I apologize to the cast and crew for using shorthand like “the closet scene” and “the mad scene,” because their performances felt like they were the first time anyone had ever acted these roles, and they don’t deserve to be reduced to a deck of playing cards. But at the same time, Shakespeare purists will have no problems with this production, as even the most creative choices are textually supported. The biggest adaptation was that a lot of the minor characters were conflated into a single character named Osric (portrayed chillingly by Anuj Parik). This Osric was no fop, but rather a stoic bodyguard/lieutenant type of character with a gun who carries out orders from Claudius with ruthless efficiency. But even this choice is well supported by the text, because it’s consistent with the character of Claudius. This is a man who killed his own brother and usurped his nephew to become king; of course, he’d keep a guy like this around.
Titan’s Hamlet is running one more weekend (April 11-14), which is good news for you, and probably for me as well. I’m likely to return to see it again, as well as any production Titan does in the future. Watch this space.