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| Hamlet plays through 9/26 in Manassas, VA |
September 21, 2010 - Darrell Poe
For their debut production in the beautiful new Hylton Performing Arts Center, located on George Mason University’s Prince William campus, local theater company Vpstart Crow tackles one of literature’s greatest tragedies – William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The tale of the young Danish Prince is told in a modern setting – think Hamlet meets The Sopranos with a side of Jersey Shore.
The Gregory Family Theater makes a great first impression, and Rob Batarla’s clean, modern set fits well within it. Without a doubt, this is one of Vpstart Crow’s best productions in recent years – a fitting house warming to welcome us to their new home. The acting talent is some of the best I’ve seen locally – a few new faces and several veterans of the local stage.
Matthew Marcus takes on the well worn role of Hamlet, following in the footsteps of Sir Laurence Olivier, Mel Gibson, and Kenneth Branagh – among thousands. Certainly no easy task, but one Marcus has clearly approached thoughtfully, and performed compellingly. He commands your attention whenever he’s on stage, pulls you along on his mad journey to vengeance, and ultimately, to Hamlet’s own tragic demise. His direct address is engaging, and his interaction on stage with the well rounded ensemble is natural and believable at every turn. In equal turns humorous and serious, heartwarming and heartbreaking.
Bethany Goodell steps confidently and competently into the role of Ophelia – both the object of Hamlet’s affections, and the unwitting victim of his hubris. In typical Shakespearean fashion Ophelia’s father, Polonius (smartly played by new comer Kevin Walker) is accidentally killed by Hamlet – although the circumstances are questionable at best. When Ophelia learns of her father’s death she is driven past the brink of sanity, and Goodell’s portrayal of this turn is absolutely riveting. Her performance strides confidently along the precipice of credible emotion – it’s a huge bet, and it pays off.
Donning the role of Laertes, Ophelia’s protective brother, is Vpstart veteran and local talent - James Majewski. Majewski brings a surprising blend of swagger and reverence to Laertes in the early scenes. While I question some of the blocking, Majewski personifies gripping, palpable, authentic rage in the funeral scene. A bit disturbing? Yes - but unquestionably compelling, and entertaining to watch.
The fencing duel is a fine bit of fight choreography, capably handled by Marcus and Majewski, and credibly incorporated into the modern setting.
Batarla’s sound design, however, leaves a great deal (or a great deal less) to be desired. Accompanying the actor’s at various points throughout is a somewhat distracting and uneven underscore. At times tolerable, but more often I felt it robbed the actor’s of their opportunity to transport the audience. In an early scene between Ophelia and Laertes, I found myself removed from the scene by the low-quality, midi-composed score. It’s dissonance with the apparent production value of the play, and the considerable talent of the cast is actually somewhat baffling.
The supporting cast all play their parts well with delightful subtleties that weave a rich backdrop for the tragedy that unfolds. Not once was I taken out of the experience by an actor’s delivery – no mean feat for a local theater company producing Hamlet in the shadow of The Washington Shakespeare Company.
All in all, I give a resounding “Bravo!” to Vpstart Crow, director Rob Batarla, and his very talented cast.
Hamlet is playing through 9/26 – for details and tickets visit the Hylton Performing Arts Center Box Office online at HyltonCenter.org, in person at 10900 University Boulevard, Manassas, VA 20110, or by phone at 1.888.945.2468
Hamlet is playing through 9/26 – for details and tickets visit the Hylton Performing Arts Center Box Office online at HyltonCenter.org, in person at 10900 University Boulevard, Manassas, VA 20110, or by phone at 1.888.945.2468
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Note: I am splitting this response into two posts for size reasons.
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All respects to the reviewer, but I recently attended a performance of VpStart Crow's production of Hamlet, and I could not disagree more with their opinions on the show. While it was not completely without merit, I found the show to be deficient in almost every respect, including the acting, set, music, and director's intentions.
Hamlet is an enormously challenging undertaking on so many levels. It is Shakespeare's longest and arguably his most complex play. The text is deep and nuanced, and the demands it places on its actors is immense. In my opinion, the cast was simply unable to stand up to the challenges of the play, and their director seems not to have prepared them for the task.
Concerning the acting, I found Matthew Marcus' portrayal of Hamlet, while well-spoken, to be very uneven. While Marcus was able to conjure up a wealth of emotions, his application of them to the text was, at times, seemingly random, particularly in his scenes with Ophelia, which veered wildly from affection to near shouting rage on a whim. Also, while I found his physicality to aid him in many of the play's more comedic moments, they became exuberant to the point of distraction in the final act. James Majewski's Laertes came off as weak and ineffectual, lacking the more resolute qualities of the character. George Kitchen and Sarah Rosenbaum put in good turns with understated portrayals of Claudius and Gertrude, though Kitchen's Claudius seemed at times aloof and unfocused, and Rosenbaum's Gertrude's remoteness in early scenes impaired her connection to her son. Bethany Goodell's Ophelia seemed likewise unengaged early on, though her mad scene was one of the show's acting highlights. Kevin Walker's track-suited Polonius was the only character who truly seemed to fit with director Batarla's New Jersey setting (with the possible exception of Chris Whitney's cool tempered and effective Horatio), while the ensemble cast performed passably well, with the exception of a few cringe worthy moments that I will discuss further on.
The technical aspects of the show left much to be desired on multiple fronts. The modern set was made up of four playing areas. Stage right consisted of a couch buttressed by two chairs, center stage featured a dining room table and chairs flanked by a liquor cabinet, and stage left included a corner desk and chairs. All of these set pieces were arranged across the stage in a straight line, robbing the stage of depth and causing much of the staging to be flat. The fourth staging area was a poorly lit catwalk surrounding the stage floor on three sides. In general, the lighting was unimaginative and inadequate, with numerous dark spots that sometimes completely obscured actors from view. The sound, as this review stated, was nothing special, though I did not find it nearly as distracting as the performances.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteFinally, there were numerous instances in which I felt that the directing was clumsily at odds with the text. The updated setting added nothing to the play other than modern furniture, costumes, and props (the casts' constant aimless fiddling with prop guns was also distracting). I am not opposed to modern reimaginings of Shakespeare's plays, but Batarla's modern New Jersey setting seemed to serve no clear thematic purpose. The Player King is presented as frightened and bumbling, his recitation for Hamlet an absurdly overacted and slapstick farce lacking any genuine emotion. The playing of the scene directly conflicts with Hamlet's later soliloquy in which he laments that the genuine emotions portrayed by the Player King over the fictional Hecuba reflect poorly his own inability to confront Claudius over his very real loss. The gravediggers of act five are clumsily reimagined as funeral directors who for some reason feel that the appropriate decor for a funeral consists of a table lined with exhumed human skulls. One of these skulls is, of course, that of Yorick, and proceeds to be tossed from the stage floor to the catwalk, undercutting the emotion of one of Hamlet's most moving speeches. Nor does it end there, the scene climaxes with Laertes in his sister's coffin, simultaneously clutching Ophelia's dead body to his chest with one hand while strangling Hamlet with the other. This over-the-top staging elicited laughter from the audience the night I attended. The scene ends with stage hands wheeling off Ophelia's coffin, with Laertes still along for the ride. That being said, the play's final scene was well blocked, the sword fighting effective if not particularly exciting. By that point, however, my expectations for the play were so low that any competent bit of stagecraft garnered elevated levels of appreciation.
In conclusion, Vpstart Crow's production of Hamlet suffered from serious flaws in nearly every aspect. One can't help but feel bad for the largely young cast who, while mostly sufficient at speaking the bard's words, simply seemed unready to take on the many challenges inherent to one of his greatest plays. They certainly were not aided in their endeavor by their director, whose inability to provide a meaningful and coherent world for the play, combined with his failure to rein in and focus his young cast, ultimately resulted in a production that falls far short of success.
Chris - Thanks for your remarks, and for reading.
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