'Hamlet' at the Wilma (first review)

This is the one question in the play that is so obvious it is never asked. Hamlet is the son and heir of his father. There is no dispute in the play about his rightful succession, nor does anyone, before he feigns madness, doubt his competence. He is fully of age. So, why is Claudius, his uncle, king to begin with?

We do not know where Hamlet was when his father was assassinated. We know he was a student at Wittenberg, but when his old colleagues Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up, he greets them as friends he has not seen in a good while. When the play begins, his father’s death is barely two months old. Even if he had been temporarily absent, he has speedily returned. In such an absence, and in the confusion caused by old Hamlet’s demise, it is conceivable that Claudius could have assumed the role of regent. But he is in fact the king and rules as one. Hamlet refers in passing to the succession that is rightfully his, but he does not claim it. Instead, he seems to be hanging about the palace without employment. Why?

Shakespeare doesn’t address the question, so we are left to conjure up a backstory. Perhaps Hamlet was absent when his father was murdered, came back to find that a coup d’état had taken place, and is pondering how to raise a party on his behalf? But there isn’t any textual evidence of this. When he learns the truth of his father’s death from his ghost, he accepts it as his duty to kill Claudius. But surely it is his duty to do so, even in the absence of the story he hears. Hasn’t Claudius simply stolen the throne that belongs to him?

Oedipal guilt

The only plausible answer to this question is the Oedipal one, namely that Claudius has done what Hamlet secretly wished to do, which is to kill his father and marry his mother. That Claudius reigns in his stead absolves Hamlet, at least partly, of his guilt; that Claudius has married his mother also puts at a safe distance Hamlet's incestuous temptation. Claudius has committed the crime, but Hamlet feels himself guilty of it; Claudius’s unmerited reign is Hamlet’s just punishment. Such guilt would both explain why Hamlet resolves to act only on the spur of the ghost’s command, and why — a fact that puzzles him no less than us — he is unable to do so.

This is a compelling argument, and Hamlet has been played as paralyzed by Oedipal guilt, notably in Sir Laurence Olivier’s famous film adaptation of the play. Needless to say, however, we must appeal to Shakespeare’s own subconscious motivations in such an accounting and to the very few hints in the text — his behavior in the play scene and in Gertrude’s bedroom, and his ambivalent courtship of Ophelia — that might support an Oedipal construction.

One thing about Hamlet, however, is indubitable: He is male. He has, it is true, his passive-aggressive side, and he finds himself in what might be described as a feminized condition. But, on whatever theory one wishes to account for it, his troubled masculinity is the center of the play, as well as a large part of our fascination with him after four centuries.

Nothing like a dame

Hamlet has, of course, been acted by women performers, going back to Sarah Bernhardt, and one might say that it is a favorite travesty role. Usually, accomplished actresses who can call their own shots take it on. In the current Wilma Theater production, however, director Blanka Zizka not only made the decision to cast the British-West African actress Zainab Jah in the role, but stated in interviews that Ms. Jah was the only performer she believed capable of realizing her conception of the play. This conception has been described by the Wilma’s dramaturg, Walter Bilderback, as “anti-psychological,” although Bilderback himself calls the play, somewhat contradictorily, a “political and psychological thriller.”

The confusion suggested here is carried out on the stage, which is large, open, and gloomy. Light is sparingly used and comes frequently from the side, although when Claudius cries, “Give me some light!” in the play scene, the thrust platform on which most of the action takes place is suddenly, blazingly illuminated. This literalness is repeated with the lamplit armchair that, off to the left side of the stage, seemingly indicates Hamlet’s deferred throne, and is the place where he collapses to die. The lamplight is consistently on through the play, but when he expires on the chair, we notice it is off. I would not call either of these lighting decisions particularly subtle.

Gender-bending to no particular end

Ms. Jah does her best with the role, trying to make up for her very petite frame by casting herself energetically around the stage. But Hamlet is no dervish, and in fact it is his moments of tense repose that must be built upon to suitably project his outbursts of action. It does not help, either, in the bedroom scene, that Krista Apple-Hodge’s Gertrude is twice Jah’s size, so that instead of being intimidated by her grown, angry son, she seems to be dealing with an upset child. Putting Sarah Gliko in pigtails as Ophelia, and then casting her as Fortinbras at the end, is also gender-bending to no particular end. Steven Rishard’s Claudius has some good moments, but he is not the play’s center. To borrow a line from elsewhere in Shakespeare, there is a good deal of sound and fury in the Wilma’s production. What it signifies is less clear.

For Naomi Orwin's review, click here.