‘Hamlet’ Off Broadway Review: What if Truman Capote Had Ever Played the Bard’s Moody Dane?
It’s the white stocking cap. Hiran Abeysekera wears one when his Hamlet makes that cold but scuttled boat trip from Denmark to England.
A man wearing a white stocking cap is not the most eccentric aspect of the “Hamlet” revival that opened Monday at BAM’s Harvey Theatre after a run at London’s National Theatre. The headwear, however, does give us a clue to what Shakespeare’s famous Dane would have been if Truman Capote had ever played the role. The only difference, Truman’s cap would have been cashmere. Abeysekera’s looks to be pure Polyester.
The actor, last seen Stateside in “The Life of Pi” on Broadway in a London transfer, doesn’t replicate Capote’s signature soprano wisp of a whine. Abeysekera’s speech, however, is just as bizarre and, sometimes, indecipherable. His high-pitched voice keeps running up and down the scales of Hamlet’s soliloquies as if he were a tenor warming up his voice before a performance, elongating odd vowels along the way. He also ends or begins a speech with big jargonish exclamations that Shakespeare didn’t write but sound as if they came from a Kewpie Doll if a Kewpie Doll could talk.
But what’s most Capote-like is this actor’s relentless irony. Hamlet mocks a lot of other characters, most ferociously Polonius (Matthew Cottle, being very funny) followed by Claudius (Alistair Petrie, being very tragic), Gertrude (Ayesha Dharker, being very incompetent), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Hari Mackinnon and Joe Bolland, being very gay), and Ophelia (Francesca Mills, much more about her later).
Hamlet’s staging of the Mouse-trap is nothing but mockery. Abeysekera, however, doesn’t stop there. After blatantly ridiculing everybody, except good friend Horatio (Tessa Yong, being in competition with Dharker for worst performance), he also sends up the text.
Robert Hastie’s direction brings to mind the work of Sam Pinkleton, director of “Oh, Mary!” and the new revival of “The Rocky Horror Show.” This “Hamlet” is often amusing, sometimes hilariously so, but it is rarely tragic. As Susan Sontag told us, tragedy is never ironic.
What manages to be genuinely sad is Claudius’ confession, “Oh, my offence is rank it smells to heaven.” It makes sense, after hearing such heartfelt words, that Hamlet can’t kill the man who murdered his father.
Abeysekera’s Hamlet has a nice flirtatious moment with Rosencrantz in front of Guildenstern. Is this royal Dane gay? No, he’s just making fun of a friend’s sexual orientation. As with Capote, Abeysekera appears to be beyond gender. Occasionally, he does butch it up with big Richard Burton explosions (think “The Robe”) that detonate the theater.
Hamlet is a lot of things, but one aspect of his personality I’ve never seen explored before is his extreme vanity. Abeysekera goes there with his first appearance, wearing high-heel boots (set and costumes by Ben Stones). He’s not a tall man, but did no one tell this Hamlet that his girlfriend is a little person? Maybe Hamlet is trying to impress Ophelia by being three-heads taller. Or does he just prefer kissing her seated or on his knees?
Francesca Mills is not a conventional Ophelia; she is, however, a very powerful one, and never more so than in her mad scene in which she appears wearing a fencer’s mask and later switches to angel wings. Mills is a very game performer who doesn’t appear to be bothered that Stones’ costumes often make her look ridiculous, which is in the spirit of this production.
Mills may do a bit too much hair flouncing in her first scene. That flippancy, along with her often bizarre costumes, walks the fine line between the absurd and the tragic. Performing that high wire act, Mills maintains an exquisite balance.
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