Playwright: adapted by Tony Lewis from the play by William Shakespeare
At: MidTangent Productions at Oracle Theatre, 3809 N. Broadway
Phone: 1-800-595-4849; $15-$20
Runs through: March 11
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
It has often been said that Hamlet is a man of two minds, but in Tony Lewis' adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy, the melancholy prince has no less than three: the consciousness attached to his corporeal self, and two inner personalities—one male, one female. Laertes also has an alter ego, an angry demon who scrambles about on all fours, growling and screeching like a cougar at bay. Ophelia, the sister after whom he—yawn!—secretly lusts, also has a companion spirit: a wistful Columbine. The latter, after going mad, hands out pharmaceutical pills instead of flowers—a clue to the conceptual metaphor employed in this MidTangent production.
When all the actors wear masks as ornate and richly-detailed as those crafted by Jeff Semmerling, facial expression counts for little. Lewis' direction more than compensates in vocal and kinetic intricacy, however, with the three Hamlets overlapping each other on the long recitations; Ophelia and her doppelgänger dancing a pretty adagio; and much roaring, raging and beating on walls. Fans of theatre-as-gymnastics will revel in the physicality of the MidTangents' interpretive dynamic ( the show-stopper being Hamlet#1's thrilling leap—spanning most of the stage—during the graveside scene. ) Intensifying the E.T.A. Hoffman ambience is a score of well-selected incidental music.
But despite its dazzling acrobatics, the sum of I Am Hamlet's parts still falls short of a satisfying whole. Lewis' terpsichorean approach mandates textual excisions inclining more toward solo turns than ensemble interaction. Gertrude and Ophelia are dutifully thrown to the floor in the course of their encounters with, respectively, son and suitor—a clichéd remnant of the 1948 film starring Laurence Olivier—with the casting of a woman in the role of Horatio merely adding another body to the roster of human beanbags. And if Lewis' rendering of the climactic duel as a chess game represents a welcome break from the adrenaline-fueled spectacle, its innovation is eclipsed in the final moments when his analogical foundation is revealed to be training exercises familiar to theater students for the last half-century.
I Am Hamlet belongs to an artistic genre that includes venerable experiments by Lookingglass and Plasticine, among others. But at two hours ( with one intermission ) , an awareness of the audience experience, as well as the participants', is needed to elevate it from academe to professional performance.