All Is Not Well

THE FATHER ALSO RISES: Rob Campbell (Hamlet) and Michael Emerson (Ghost) talk about old times.
Photo By: T. Charles Erickson

by David Anthony Fox

There is no single way to direct Hamlet, that masterpiece of masterpieces — but there are thousands of ways not to. So when McCarter artistic director Emily Mann writes about Daniel Fish's new production that "he invites us to look at the play as if it were brand new. He strips the play down so that artists and audiences can see and hear it in a new way," well, be wary. Very, very wary.

How stripped down is it? Forget castles and parapets. Forget costumes (unless you like your Danish Prince sockless, in track pants, loafers, a white shirt, tie and V-neck pullover). Forget the marriage bed, the funeral table and even the baked meats.

Instead, we get naked walls, two ugly tables, and several mismatched chairs. Talk about thrift, Horatio!

We also get an ensemble of eight (six men, two women), several of whom play multiple roles. Some of the doubling is witty (Claudius and the Ghost), some of it nonsensical (Gertrude and Rosencrantz??). As for the actors, they fall into categories: inept (Horatio, Laertes, Gertrude); intermittently OK (Ophelia); weird (Frank Woods' doofus Player King; also Michael Emerson, whose neurasthenic Claudius seems more like Tennessee Williams' Miss Alma). There's one shining example of excellence: David Margulies as Polonius is the only actor to realize the magic of Shakespeare's text. And, of course, there is Rob Campbell as Hamlet — more about him in a minute.

There's nothing wrong with Hamlet in modern dress or even mimicking rehearsal conditions. There's nothing new about it either; a 1964 Broadway version, directed by John Gielgud, did just this and had the overwhelming advantage of Richard Burton as Hamlet.

But Fish's production seems mostly like novelty for novelty's sake. The good ideas — and there are some — are lost amid a fusillade of self-conscious cleverness. The losses here far outweigh the gains; we don't need medieval castles for Hamlet, but surely we need to move — metaphorically, at least-- from outside to inside; from palatial grandeur to the dankness of swamp and grave; from brilliance to darkness.

We don't get any of these things in Fish's tiny world. Campbell's Hamlet is a prime example: He's got up to look like an aging frat boy and ruins his early soliloquies by sniveling through them. Later, there's some style in the performance, particularly the feigned madness, but ultimately it's a Hamlet of constricted range: from moping to quirkiness and back. Where is the rage, the luminous intelligence and wit, the well, the tragedy?

For the record, the production does hold our interest for its three hours, and the story is mostly easy to follow, and of course, remarkably compelling. That's the other thing it has — the greatest script in the English language; never underestimate the importance of that.

But comparing what Fish has wrought from what Will has written? O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!

HAMLET Through June 19, McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787