Since art, like life itself, constantly renews itself, new generations of artists arrive on stages, and in studios and publishing houses, whether we are ready for them or not. They are not deterred by inhospitable times, such as depressions (viz Paul Robeson, Orson Wells) or World Wars (viz. Ernest Hemmingway, Norman Mailer). We have not had a plague in living memory, but we have one now. Art will come out of it nonetheless.
We have institutions to regulate and cultivate this tsunami of artistic aspiration, and one of them is at George Washington University, in collaboration with the Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy of Classical Acting. They take the tyros who come to them seeking training and validation, and give them what they want. As part of their credentialing, they are given difficult plays to perform, and the best of them are given the most difficult play in the English language, Hamlet.
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But this year, because of the plague, the extraordinary challenge of staging Hamlet is incomparably more difficult. No one can strut his stuff upon the stage. It is a fraught exercise even to be in the same room with another actor. So the Academy of Classical Acting decided to stage a radio play instead.
A radio play? You may remember them from your youth, or from WAMU’s The Big Broadcast. They are loud, broad things; because sound is the only medium available, they are designed so that the meaning of every line is unmistakable. Hamlet is the opposite. Deep and subtle, Hamlet is a palace of words, full of double and triple meaning, full of implication and inference – and passion and madness, certainly, but as the Prince of Denmark himself points out, the madness is only mad North-Northwest.
The Hamlet story is probably the most well-known in the English language, but for those of you who have recently immigrated from Mars (and as a device to identify the actors) let me summarize it. Hamlet (Dan Wilson), Prince of Denmark, has returned to Elsinore from college in order to mourn the death of his beloved father and also to witness the remarriage of his mother Gertrude (Christie Coran) to his father’s brother Claudius (Daniel Hines). He meets his good friend Horatio (Claire Inie-Richards) who delivers astonishing news: the ghost of his father has appeared at one of Elsinore’s outposts. Hamlet goes there and learns from the ghost (Derrick Utley,voice enhanced by Gordon Nimmo Smith’s excellent team) that his father died not from snakebite, as had been thought, but through Claudius’ murderous hand. He charges his son to revenge him.
Hamlet embraces his mission, but hesitates. What if what he saw was not his father, but a hallucination, or a demon sent to vex him? What if Claudius, repugnant as he is, is nonetheless guiltless of murder? Either because his dilemma has addled him or as part of a subtle plot, Hamlet becomes unspeakably rude to his beloved lady, Ophelia (Morgan Pavey), and her father, the courtier Polonius (J. Tyler Jones). Claudius and Gertrude, noting his odd behavior, send for some school chums, Rosencrantz (Kathryn Coppa) and Guildenstern (Petrea Whittier) in the hope that they might get Hamlet to reveal to them what he is unwilling to reveal to the older generation. This only enrages the Prince further.
To resolve all doubts about Claudius’ guilt, Hamlet engages a traveling troupe to stage one of the classics, and instructs the lead player (Carolyn Woolf) to add a plot twist, in which the brother of the protagonist murders him to steal his wife. The plot has its desired effect, and Hamlet thinks he has his man. But he dithers; passes on an opportunity to kill Claudius at his prayers; confronts his mother; kills Polonius by mistake; and is deported to England in the custody of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Ophelia is made mad with grief over her father’s death, and her brother Laertes (Utley) ragefully swears vengeance against Hamlet.
Well. I don’t normally review student productions – even with such high-end students – since it seems unfair that folks not being paid for their performances be subject to the rheums and complaints of carping critics. But the Shakespeare Theatre Company asked us to, and during these extraordinary times, when biology has made a desert out of theater, we must make adjustments.
The good news is that this student radio-play version of what is arguably the greatest play ever written is a coherent whole, with high drama, frightening suspense, moments of tenderness and sadness – even though we know how it will all turn out. Director Alec Wild and his team have trimmed the text usefully, and if I had not read that each actor had recorded lines separately and alone, and the team had put them together, I would have assumed that they were in the same room as they delivered the text.
It is not an entirely successful enterprise, though. With one glorious exception, which I’ll get to later, I don’t get much of a fix on the individual characters; to the extent I do get a fix, the character doesn’t seem that interesting. I blame this principally on the medium the program was forced to choose; the great thing about Hamlet is that it can be interpreted through staging, an option not open here. For example, this Claudius did not seem charming, or charismatic, or dangerous; he seemed reasonable, even sweet. When I heard him, I was reminded, incongruously, of Jimmy Carter.
ASC Radio Reps
Romeo and Juliet, Man and Superman, Hamlet
DCTS reviews the Radio Reps
– Where to listen: The podcasts are widely available including
RadioPublic, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
But this might be a problem which could be remedied only by visual effects. The last time I saw Hamlet staged at STC, the Danish Prince delivered his speech about Polonius and the politic worms strapped to a chair, with Claudius pounding the hell out of him between lines.
The play rises and falls with its title character; we understand the play with our understanding of Hamlet. When Michael Urie played the role, the madness was real; Hamlet was the cobra who came to your house, telling jokes. When Jeffrey Carlson played the role a few years back, Hamlet was a child – a whiny teenager, whose real sense of grievance played against a background of self-indulgence and entitlement.
Wilson’s Hamlet appears to be a legitimate victim; despondent, irresolute, and largely surprised by events as they occur. It is certainly a valid choice, but it makes our noble Dane a little less noble, and a little less sympathetic. I was not moved by the “to be or not to be” soliloquy. On the other hand, his “rogue and peasant slave” speech, toward the end of the first (as they divide it here) Act, is marvelously effective. Wilson’s Hamlet is at his best when he displays his self-loathing.
Coran as Gertrude and Utley as Laertes are both wonderfully effective in delivering their high emotional moments, but Utley in particular has difficulty showing us the transition from a normal emotional state to his moments of high drama. This, again, is probably a shortcoming of the form, which robs him of all the tools in his toolbox except the voice. In a normally-staged production the actor can show the transition in his face, his body, his gestures and his voice; in the radio drama he has just the voice, and in many cases, it is not enough.
If I were to select a single actor who I would expect to see doing classical performances for many years to come, solely on the basis of this production, it would be the excellent Pavey as Ophelia. She seizes an opportunity to establish her character with her first exchange with Laertes, and she does: a strong-willed, self-confident young lady, possessed of considerable wit and the will to use it. When her father forbids her from seeing Hamlet, her voice shows a complex set of emotions. She is being told to give up something she values highly; she knows she’s good for Hamlet (we do too) but she responds not just out of a sense of duty but because she loves Polonius. When she sings her mad songs (she has a very fine voice) after the death of Polonius, she bites off each line in anger, and we understand that the anger is directed at herself, since if she had defied her father, none of this, she thinks, would have happened. It is a wonderfully committed and consistent performance, and a convincing one.
Wild’s sound design is effective. In particular, it works during the scenes where the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears. The sound is frightening and otherworldly, but never so pronounced that it distracts from the action, or the acting, which must be the focus of the moment. Less effective is his decision to use voice overlays. For example, when Polonius reads a letter from Hamlet to Claudius, the voice of Hamlet intervenes, and soon it is Hamlet reading the letter. The first time I heard it, I wondered what the heck was going on – had Hamlet arrived suddenly, or was this Claudius reading the letter along with Polonius? Eventually I got the technique, but I never saw how it added to anybody’s understanding of the play.
Well, that’s how I heard it. Your results may vary. And if you want to disagree with me from an informed point of view, there’s a free and easy way to do it. Just take this link to play the broadcast yourself.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (a radio adaptation). Directed by Alec Wild . Featuring Raghad Makhlouf (Fortinbras), Libby Barnard (Osricke, Francisco, Ambassador), Christie Coran (Gertrude), Kathryn Coppa (Rosencrantz), Daniel Hines (Claudius), Claire Inie-Richards (Horatio), J. Tyler Jones (Polonius), Sam Parrott (Barnardo, Gravedigger), Morgan Pavey (Ophelia), Derrick Utley (Hamlet, Sr and Laertes), Petrea Whittier (Guildenstern), Dan Wilson (Hamlet), Sarah Corbin Woolf (Marcellus, First Player, Gravedigger) . Vocal Coach, Lisa Beley . Sound design: Alex Wild . Shakespeare Theatre Company Audio team led by Gordon Nimmo Smith . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
