A college student returns home to find that his uncle killed his father, married his mother and wants his nephew/son out of the picture. Typical family drama. But Hamlet is also a ghost story, where the murdered limbo-living father presses his immobile, sometimes suicidal, son to avenge his death. Why is this tale repeated so often? To summarize/bastardize Harold Bloom, it’s because Shakespeare invented the human being in his plays, a real rebirth to echo the larger Renaissance when this piece was penned. Previously, entertainments contained stock, overdrawn and oversimplified creatures, but the Bard was one of the first to craft nuanced and complicated emotions and reactions for his characters.
The Brits know their Bard, so seeing one serve up probably the greatest play ever written is “a consummation / Devoutly to be wished.” Tony-nominated actor/comedian Suzy Eddie Izzard (she/her) tackles the Hamlet juggernaut solo, a daunting task but well-suited for one who’s known for running 32 marathons in 31 days. Adapted by Suzy’s older brother Mark Izzard and directed by Selina Cadell, this production is simple—a light-pink boxed set with one step to transition from the ramparts to the court (designed by Tom Piper)—and quiet, so the audience feels in intimate conversation with our troubled undergraduate.
Hamlet notes that Denmark is a prison, and the setting exudes a criminal mental institution vibe, replete with intrusive and claustrophobic observation windows. Hamlet constantly circles like a caged zoo animal. The play is famous for soliloquies, so it makes sense to have one actor perform the text: the character talks to himself, much like most people talk to themselves when working through anxiety or relationship issues. The pathos is palpable and the stillness is bittersweet. Hamlet misses his dad: “He was a man, take him for all in all, / I shall not look upon his like again.”
Not just any Danish prince, Hamlet Jr. is also dealing with his Uncle Claudius’ betrayal and bloodlust, his girlfriend Ophelia being forced to publicly break up with her boyfriend by her blowhard father Polonius (who plots to “loose” her on him, a gross patriarchal move), and his mother Gertrude’s posting “with such dexterity to incestuous sheets” (and who also seems to hold extraordinary details about Ophelia’s suicide to just be a bystander).
Hamlet’s got one friend in court, Horatio, when Claudius summons the prince’s college buds Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not to comfort their friend, but to spy on him and hasten Hamlet’s removal from court (and possibly from life itself). Court Theatre has extended (through April 28) its cracking good production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a backstage take on those befuddled boys (and another one of the many takes on Shakespeare’s stories). Here, Izzard makes the underminers into talking hand puppets, which is not far from their actual presentation as manipulable moppets.
Hamlet is a standup guy and Izzard is a standup comic dressed in stacked black boots, leather pants, an embroidered green peplum jacket (costumes by Piper and Libby DaCosta) and a snazzy manicure. Izzard’s gender fluidity is an appropriate match for Shakespeare’s canon, and this work in particular. Ophelia notes that her boo is of “unmatched form and feature of blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy,” and Izzard communicates Hamlet’s internal schism with care and poignancy, and occasional comedy (he jokes about the murdered Polonious’ rotting carcass as worm food: “not where he eats, but where he is eaten”) and brief audience interaction during his monologues.
This production is lovely. It’s earnest, full of wonder and melancholy. Izzard’s Hamlet is a tour-de-force of those struggling to find their places in the world, both onstage and off. All of us are “guilty creatures sitting at a play” (a line that Izzard takes to the audience), but are we witnesses or complicit in the whitewashing of lethal political machinations? See Izzard’s take on this production, fresh from a New York run before heading to London, because “madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”
Also see our story of a 1964 experimental production of Hamlet.
Hamlet runs about two and a half hours with one intermission, through May 4 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Tickets start at $69 and are available at 312-595-5600.
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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