A family affair

Edwin Booth’s Hamlet

By Josh Rogers

SKULDUGGERY: Rob Eggers remembers Yorick fondly.

The life-sized ghost-doll hanging on the wall in the audience was clue number one. The second tip-off was the alarming proximity to the stage. And when the lights went out and guards ran through the aisle brandishing spears and screaming bloody murder, I ünew. Things, in Denmark, were a little bit fucked up. At the Edwin Booth Theater in Dover, NH, director/costumer/set and lighting designer Rob Eggers (in a Hitchcockian move, he also graces the stage in a little-known blink-once-and-you’ll-miss-him role — er, as Hamlet) has crafted a darkly disturbing meditation on domestic abuse and family violence. Done in a mix of modern and period costumes, Eggers’s Hamlet is not so much Baz Luhrmann, but Sam Shepard doing Shakespeare.

The king’s court in Act I, scene 2 sets the tone for the entire play. Blinding white lights illuminate the all-white stage and props. Surrounding a purposefully surreal table, raked upwards towards the audience and constructed in forced perspective, sit the usurper king, his new queen, and their courtiers looking for all the world as evil as Alex and his droogs at the Korova Milk Bar. And there sits young Hamlet “alone” in his “inky cloak”: a modified biker jacket, tight leather pants, and boots.

Eggers’s Hamlet, as opposed to that of Branagh’s in the most recent film adaptation, is full of life, angry that his mom got with his dad’s brother so quickly, but still able to laugh, shout, and talk above a smoldering whisper. His first soliloquy is passionately delivered, as he stares directly into the eyes of the audience, flitting from one person to another, finally singling one poor girl out from the front row for the “Frailty, thy name is woman” bit. Ouch.

As with many contemporary versions of Hamlet, Eggers tweaks his version slightly, casting it as a look at domestic abuse. Polonius (Isaac Deweaver) is a far cry from Richard Briers’s doting dad. His game is control and he invokes physical terror, literally pushing Ophelia around the stage, slapping her, and throwing her to the floor. His violence is uncomfortable to watch, and it’s meant to be: Eggers’s Hamletïis a political play (as his character points out later, “I have heard/ That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,/ Have by the very cunning of the scene/ Been so struck to the soul that presently/ They have proclaim’d their malefactions”).

It’s a mis-step to make Hamlet too much of a hero, and Eggers wisely avoids this trap. Although there is much to like in Eggers’s handsome frame, his pixieish eyes, and his humor, his Hamlet comes from a background of violence, as well, and as such, he’s tainted by it. Hamlet flies into a rage at Ophelia’s affections toward him and, like Polonius, slaps her, throws her to the floor, and stops just short of miming a rape. Even as he’s trying to right the brutality visited upon his father, he’s perpetrating it on others.

Shakespeare. Hamlet. Domestic abuse. Anyone setting out to tackle such 250-pound running backs as these better have it together. Overall, Eggers succeeds. But just barely.

Although he’s a riveting Hamlet, most of the other characters aren’t developed. Their personalities and motivations lie dormant throughout the tragedy. Mike Neal is a riotously campy Osric, and Natan Daskal’s Gravedigger is pretty funny, but most of the more important supporting characters are hard to read.

Making their final bow at the opening night’s close, the cast looked exhausted and stunned, perhaps because the show clocked in at three-and-a-half hours (though it was billed as two-and-a-half). The time ballooned, at least partly, because of clumsy set changes and other tech details. Positioned so close to the audience and lacking a curtain, the Edwin Booth’s stage needs fast, simple set changes. Unfortunately, the props in this production were large, clunky, and too numerous. Seconds stretched into minutes at points because of complicated and unwieldy props. And, in many instances, they were extraneous to the plot, anyway.

There were other technical difficulties with an otherwise inspired use of a DV projector for Hamlet’s Ghost. There was a lot of fumbling around trying to get the projector to start, and then the sound did not quite sync up with the video. Still, the monochrome, slow-motion projection of the old King of the Danes was spooky and quite ethereal.

Perhaps Eggers took too many responsibilities upon himself with this production. The set and makeup (and some of the casting and direction) clearly suffers, while his own acting and some of the conceptual themes running throughout succeed beautifully. For the most part, not a bad version. The final swordfight will thrill you as sabers zing through the air above the heads of people in the first row. That is, if you’ve made it through the first 200 minutes.

Josh Rogers can be reached at jrogers@phx.com.