How it’s New York: St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is one of the finest venues for
provocative, international theatre in New York.
How it’s Irish: This production of “Hamlet” comes from The Gate Theatre in Dublin, and is co-presented by Irish Arts Center.
Nearly every line in “Hamlet” feels familiar: “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.”
“To be, or not to be.”
“To a nunnery, go! and quickly too.”
“Neither a buyer nor lender be.”
One could go on.
That’s why it’s so startling to see a production of “Hamlet” that feels entirely fresh. But that’s what director Yaël Farber has accomplished. Simply, this “Hamlet” is the best I’ve ever seen.
Farber stages “Hamlet” as dystopian drama. On stage as you enter, a hanging censer burns incense. Smoke fills the stage. Then bells ring, and we see Prince Hamlet (Ruth Negga, “Preacher,” “Loving”) grieving over the corpse of his murdered father. Keening is heard.
Hamlet screams silently. It’s powerful. Effective. Unforgettable.
Beginning here sets the scene for what will follow: a story that is dark, sad and dangerous.
Though it’s still the story of Prince Hamlet, whose father was murdered by his uncle, and who is told by his father’s ghost to avenge him, it startles and surprises.
The feeling of an authoritarian state continues with the guards who keep watch, the first that see the Ghost (Steve Hartland). They carry machine guns as well as flashlights. The Ghost appears in the house. We’re living in this world.
Then Hamlet pushes in an elegant wingchair. Chandeliers descend (Elegant and evocative set and costumes by Susan Hilferty). We’re in the palace.
Farber brilliantly has Claudius (Owen Roe) announce his marriage to Gertrude (Fiona Bell), his “sometime sister, now our queen,” standing upstage, talking to an invisible crowd below, that cheers “DENMARK!” Oh. We’re in a dictatorship. Claudius is a tyrant. He grabs the hand of young Laertes (Gavin Drea) with a Trump-like grip.
Something, indeed, is rotten in the state of Denmark.
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READ: All the world’s a cell: Phyllida Lloyd’s ‘The Tempest’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse
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Farber has streamlined Shakespeare’s tragedy. Hamlet is not a procrastinator who thinks too much, contrasted to noble Fortinbras, the man of action, who only appears at the end. In fact, Fortinbras does not exist in this “Hamlet.” Negga’s Hamlet is young, sensitive, frightened. And who would not be? He is in a snake pit.
Early, we see Ophelia (Aoife Duffin) hanging on Hamlet, trying to comfort him with kisses: she is there when her beloved talks about wishing he could kill himself (“To be, or not to be.”) Her Ophelia is not stupid, just trapped, as he is. And no wonder: this palace is full of snakes. No wonder she will eventually go mad. (This does mean Hamlet’s speech is no longer truly a soliloquy, however.)
Rosencrantz (Barry McKiernan) and Guildenstern (Shane O’Reilly), Hamlet’s friends, summoned to Elsinore to spy on him, comport themselves like spies, not Tom Stoppard’s hapless fools. Polonius (Nick Dunning), the father of Laertes and Ophelia, who delivers Shakespeare’s lines of platitudes, seems less the amiable bumbler, but the seasoned courtier. Think Chuck Grassley, not Fred Thompson. In other words, he’s no fool, and don’t be fooled by an “aw, shucks” act. It will turn on a dime to be brusque. Dunning makes his advice not that silly, either: he realizes he’s giving “Dad advice,” and when he stops and says “to thine own self be true,” it’s actually touching.
It makes sense for this authoritative Polonius to oversee the audition of the Players in a way it hasn’t before. It often seems Polonius is just curious. Here, he’s clearly in control. His approval matters. Hamlet wants to hire the players to stage “the mousetrap,” depicting a poisoning, as his father was poisoned, “to catch the conscience of the king.”
When the play is staged, Hamlet and the court watch from the audience. Farber again uses the entire house, and brings us into this world.
In Farber’s staging, Claudius prays now not to God, but in the presence of a priest (Shane O’Reilly). It’s a confession, and it’s not (and, like Hamlet above, no longer a soliloquy). And it makes sense that Hamlet cannot just rush out and kill him.
Bell’s Gertrude seems shell-shocked, stunned (if Roe’s Claudius has Trumpian physicality, hers is very Melania), until the bedroom scene where Hamlet shakes her into realizing her complicity in her husband’s murder. She looks right at Hamlet and sees him, and sees him seeing her. Their love, like his to Ophelia, can almost save them. Almost.
Farber’s mise-en-scènes constantly surprise and frighten. Music by Tom Lane adds tremendously to the moods of terror or grief, with cello and keening. Lights by John Torres add to the atmosphere.
Negga’s small stature makes her Hamlet a sweet and boyish one. Of course, he has to feign madness to see what’s going on. He’s too small to scare anybody; he has to be wily. Negga’s enormous eyes underscore Shakespeare’s poetry; you never forget his pain.
“Hamlet” continues at St. Ann’s Warehouse through March 8.
