Review: Hamlet (Austin Drama Club 6th version) by Austin Drama Club
by Brian Paul Scipione

An Unweeded Garden: Austin Drama Club’s 6^thProduction of Hamlet

 

Many will argue in favor of a favorite song or play is but few will put their money on what is the best.  It is easiest to pinpoint what is the ultimate movie or band when one is, say, a freshman in college.  Shakespeare is the best writer! Death Cab for Cutie is the most sublime band ever!  Dostoevsky has captured the true infirmity of the human soul!

 

Yet as one ages, learns more, reads more and plainly just experiences more, one is likely to leave behind the notion that one is absolutely sure of anything. My favorite Shakespeare play is Measure for Measure but, nonetheless, Hamlet is probably the best of Shakespeares's plays.

 

Hamlet has the best lead role, the most emphatic villain, the saddest heroine, and comic foils everywhere.  The plot is tight and moves between the supernatural and political themes with a seamlessness emulated in everything from Brave New World to Star Wars. Its ending is tragic beyond tragedy and its message as meaningful as it is morose. If a theatre company were to choose one work as their flagship production, then they could do no better than this, Shakespeare’s magnum opus.

 

Of course, many would argue that the play is sprawling, complex, and behooving of a certain reverence: that is, it should not be approached lightly.  This viewpoint was evident in the Hamlet produced last year by Black Swan Productions at the Scottish Rite Theatre and, later, at Boggy Creek cemetary.

 

Japhy Fernandes's most recent vision of the bard’s classic is on a different level, nay, on a different planet from the play’s traditional interpretation, and this is by all means refreshing.  He has crafted a version that highlights the eight main characters of the play and their stories.  All minor characters and sub-plots have been completely excised and some lines have been reassigned. In this production Horatio barks that something is rotten in Denmark, but these characters are far from Denmark.

 

The Austin Drama Club, in their signature guerrilla-theatre fashion, have used lots of curtains, a few paintings and a makeshift, garage-style bar and cabaret to transform the black box of the Off Center into a place without country or time.  The low light and constant ambient background noise complete the picture and create a setting straight out of science fiction.  There are vestiges of various eras: foils, chalices, record players, cell phones, whiskey bottles and modern art blend together impeccably in the low light.  In fact, the ghostly low lighting and the intermittent wisps from a smoke machine give the viewer the feeling of peeking into the characters' minds rather than spying on them in their castle.

 

 

That is the rub: the eight main characters of the play are allowed to display their own particularly neuroses and psychoses for what they are.  The effect of this is largely comic.  Ophelia’s descent into madness is usually portrayed as a young woman shouting and bleating nursery rhymes and love songs to an onstage audience frozen in their inability to understand or help.  In this production, Elena Weinberg’s Ophelia literally sings her blues to the accompaniment of a thumping bass and wailing guitar.  There is little sadness and much strangeness in this approach but it remains true to the character’s self-alienation and descent into vulnerability.  Hamlet still cries “Frailty, thy name is woman” in reference to his mother, yet Ellen Fernandes’ interpretation of Queen Gertrude is anything but weak.  Closer in temperament o Macbeth's queen, Fernandes’ Gerturde is icy cold, vigilant, and impossible to distract.  She is willing to kill to protect what she has.  She makes one wonder whose idea it was to kill Hamlet’s father in the first place.

 

At one point one of the curtain-walls collapses, smoke pours out, and Larry Oubre as the ghost of Hamlet’s father steps out and sings a harrowing rendition of “Vesti la Giubba” ("Put on the costume") from Leoncavallo's 1892 opera Pagliacci.  The piece fits the play’s mood, builds the tensions and offers a nice musical relief from the play’s dramatic action.  Fittingly, this aria concerns a man who has just discovered his wife’s infidelity.

 

Austin Drama Club’s sixth production of Hamlet is not only a look at the characters' individual mental breakdowns but also a nod at the group’s own journey.  During the play-within-a-play scene, the actors gather around a television and watch a video recording of the play within a play done by their own company several years ago.  This post-modern maneuver suggests that not only are the themes of Hamlet timeless but the theatrical desire to re-explore them will never end.

 

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Hamlet (Austin Drama Club 6th version)
by William Shakespeare
Austin Drama Club