Opening 1812 Productions' cabaret series, and doing double duty as a Fringe show, Quinnopolis vs. Hamlet is, apparently, an attempt to comment on The Play. I say "apparently" since I don't have the faintest idea what this mishmash of a show wants to say or do. 1812 specializes in shows that are funny and smart. This is neither.

I figure I know Hamlet as well as the next guy. And I'm not one of those purists who get all outraged and huffy if somebody brings a "concept" to a great play. I nearly fell off my chair laughing the first time I saw The Complete Works of Wm. Shakespeare. I think Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is one of the most brilliant plays of the 20th century. Quinnopolis vs. Hamlet tries to go Stoppard one better and chooses to view Hamlet from the point of view of the two guards whose line, "Who's there?" begins the play. It's the ghost of King Hamlet who's there, and from then on, no matter what these sad sacks do, the play will not be denied, forcing them to enact scenes and speak soliloquies. Mostly though, they throw stuff around and make a mess of the stage. They stand so close to each other as to speak their lines nearly inside each others' mouths. They misinterpret and trivialize. They do charades. They talk double-talk. They simper and prance. At one point they tape up their mouths with duct tape and for one brief moment the audience hoped that the rest would, in fact, be silence. But no.

Jeremy Beck and Christopher Patrick Mullen are clearly talented: They speak well, they move well, they look good. They are performers. They are not, as is painfully clear from this random mess, playwrights. And neither is David Dalton, the other "creator" who seems to direct with a look-ma-no-hands approach.