McCarter Theatre Center presents Bedlam's 'Hamlet'

Having been wowed by Bedlam’s four-actor, bare-stage Saint Joan, I returned to McCarter, where the New York City-based company is in residence with the same quartet performing William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The experience didn’t quite fit the old saying “If you’ve seen one you’ve seen 'em all,” but perhaps one, seen second, suffers from its resemblance to the other.

Eric Tucker plays the title role and again directs, apparently guided by Hamlet’s strategy to “put a manic disposition on.” I’ve never seen a Hamlet as funny as this. There’s nothing wrong with humor (Shakespeare provides plenty), but this production feels glib, as if they’re worried the audience will bolt -- as, in fact, a noticeable number did after each intermission. This means that scenes normally appreciated for their intensity, especially Hamlet’s confrontation with his mother Gertrude in her chambers, gasp hollowly for lack of that airy comic style. The problem with a relentlessly comedic approach is that any letdown deflates it.

Hamlet, says actor Tom O’Keefe during his pre-show banter, “is Shakespeare’s most underrated comedy.” Bedlam attempts to prove this by, for example, staging much of the play’s middle in a facing-out vaudevillian style, mainly staged in and around a row of four chairs.

Suit the action to the word

Most laudable about Bedlam’s Hamlet is not only its comic inventiveness, but also the cast’s sheer endurance, especially as they switch from one role to another, sometimes trading roles mid-scene to accommodate a new character’s entrance. The play’s final scene, particularly, is an acrobatic ballet of suddenly shifting roles during the Laertes-Hamlet sword fight. As we marvel at their dexterity, though, we’re not involved with the characters and story.

I would hate for this to be someone’s first Hamlet. They would probably say it’s often funny but too long (at three hours, it’s longer than many more traditional productions these days), and they would wonder what the 400-year fuss was about. As much as I appreciated the conversational quality of Hamlet’s major soliloquies, for example, their themes don’t make much of an impression here.

Bedlam strays from Hamlet’s famous advice to the players, in which he implores them to stick to the script and not ham it up. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that famous speech is still great theater advice today.

Hamlet + Joan: True love 4ever?

Much more interesting is the juxtaposition of Hamlet and Saint Joan. Shakespeare’s women, for example, fail the Bechdel Test: Ophelia’s and Gertrude’s lives and fates are tied to the men with whom they’re entangled. George Bernard Shaw’s Joan, however, answers to no man, and in that respect feels much more our contemporary.

Hamlet and Saint Joan have similar themes, however, especially about power and its abuse. Bedlam doesn’t tie either play to current events, but the parallels are easy to draw and show how great classics remain timely – and how politicians seldom change.