Off-B'way Review: Hamlet at BAM

Hiran Abeysekera in Hamlet.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Is Hamlet actually mad? That’s a question that has bedeviled scholars since the first performance of Shakespeare’s greatest play and is rarely addressed in modern productions. Most stagings I have seen (at least 20 on stage, film or TV that I can recall) assume that the Melancholy Dane’s antic disposition is a put-on job to distract from his investigation of his uncle Claudius murdering the king, Hamlet’s father. Robert Hastie’s elegant, somewhat flawed production imported from the National Theater to BAM’s Harvey stage, leaves the question of the hero’s sanity open and thus delivers an intriguing and challenging interpretation of one of the world’s most produced classics. 

Set in an opulent ballroom (Ben Stones designed the majestic sets and smart costumes, creatively lit by Jessica Hung Han Yun) and starring a youthful, frenetic lead (vibrant Hiran Abeysekera), this Hamlet takes a fresh, different approach to a familiar classic and finds new insights. 

Hiran Abeysekera and Matthew Cottle in
Hamlet. Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Take for example the closet scene wherein Hamlet murders the elderly advisor Polonius mistaking him for the treacherous Claudius. Without revealing any spoilers, Hastie’s staging is truly shocking and surprising, causing the audience to doubt Hamlet’s sanity…and perhaps their own. Hastie then has the Dane address empty air rather than the actor playing the ghost of his father (as per usual), further complicating our perceptions. Was the ghost an illusion the whole time, a figment of Hamlet’s fevered imagination? 

B'way Update: Here Lies Love and Hamlet

Jose Llana and Ruthie Ann Miles in
the Off-Broadway production of 
Here Lies Love.

The new year has barely begun, but there are already theatrical plans for summer 2023. Here Lies Love, the immersive disco musical based on the career of the infamous Imelda Marcos and the rise of the People Power Revolution of the Philippines, will make its Broadway debut and the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park series at the Delacorte will present yet another production of Hamlet, this time set in a post-COVID contemporary America.

Here Lies Love, featuring a sung-through score by pop icons David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, will begin previews at the Broadway Theater on June 17 and open on July 20. The theater will be reconfigured into a dance floor for the show's environmental design. The original production opened at the Public Theater in 2013 and won five Lucille Lortel Awards and three Drama Desk Awards. The show has had subsequent stagings in London and Seattle. Original director Alex Timbers (Tony winner for Moulin Rouge) returns to the production.

Theatre Memories Part 11: Shakespeare, The Tragedies

The photo is from my collection of Hamlet playbills: I did not see Richard Burton or Albert Finney (Middle row); but I did see Kevin Kline (twice, both at the Public), Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes (on Broadway), Stephen Lang (Roundabout), Peter Sarsgaard (CSC), Michael Stuhlbarg (Delacorte), John Glover (Philadelphia Drama Guild at the Walnut Street Theatre), Peter Stormare (brilliant production directed by Ingmar Bergman at BAM), Tom O'Neill (at Villanova University, performed in rep with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), Brian Hugh O'Neill (performed in the 79th Street Riverside Park Boat Basin), Toby Stephens (Maggie Smith's son in London).

Other Shakespeare tragedies seen (I am leaving out TV and film versions, because there are too many):

Macbeth: Patrick Stewart (BAM/Broadway), Alan Cumming (in an almost solo version on Broadway), Christopher Plummer/Glenda Jackson, Ethan Hawke, Liev Schrieber, Kelsey Grammer (pretty terrible production), John Douglas Thompson, Corey Stoller, Alec Baldwin/Angela Bassett, Raul Julia, Kenneth Branagh/Alex Kingston at the Park Avenue Armory.

King Lear: Glenda Jackson, Derek Jacobi (my favorite), Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, John Lithgow, Hal Holbrook, F. Murray Abraham, Sam Waterston, Ian McKellen (BAM, Sylvester McCoy, Doctor Who no. 7 was the Fool), Christopher Plummer, Brian Cox (in London in rep with Richard III, Ian McKellen was the Duke of Kent and alternated as Richard III, Cox played Buckingham in Richard).