Wilma Theater's 'Hamlet': Too odd to be very moving
Blanka Zizka has directed a much-anticipated Hamlet at the Wilma Theater, and central to the advance buzz is having Zainab Jah, a petite black African woman, in the title role. So was the idea that Hamlet is essentially human, and thus postrace and postgender? Maybe. But if you want to do a high-concept production, you actually have to have a concept and not just a bunch of weird stylistic choices.
Blanka Zizka has directed a much-anticipated
Hamlet
at the Wilma Theater, and central to the advance buzz is having Zainab Jah, a petite black African woman, in the title role. So was the idea that Hamlet is essentially human, and thus postrace and postgender? Maybe. But if you want to do a high-concept production, you actually have to have a concept and not just a bunch of weird stylistic choices.
As it is, the stylistic choices - sometimes puzzling, sometimes dazzling - dominate the drama and often overwhelm the poetry, especially since some of the cast speaks very slowly, pausing at the end of lines, making little attempt at creating human speech. In a set designed by Matt Saunders, dirt falls inexplicably from the ceiling/sky. Smoke puffs out from walls covered with graffiti and war images (by Street Artist CERA). The bizarre costumes (Vasilija Zivanic) locate each character in a different era, and the super-spooky music (composed by Alex Games and Emma Violet) is more distracting than atmospheric.
Jah delivers the Shakespearean lines with strength and clarity, but without much range of emotion other than a kind of muffled rage. We rarely see the intellectual trapped by his own moral debates, his self-disgust, and his paralysis of will, as he tries to avenge his father's murder by his lascivious uncle (Steven Rishard), now king and new husband to his mother, Gertrude (Krista Apple-Hodge, who dotes on him beautifully).
Perhaps the oddest performance is of Ophelia (Sarah Gliko), who, as she intones her lines, spins slowly in a circle as she is held at arm's length, first by her father, Polonius (Joe Guzman), and then by her brother Laertes (Brian Ratcliffe). "How the wheel becomes it," indeed. It isn't possible to be moved by her death when the whole scene is attenuated and so peculiar. Ed Swidey, as the first player in the troupe of traveling actors, turns in a notably natural-sounding performance, as does Ross Beschler as Horatio.
Making the wittiest entrance, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Keith Conallen and Jered McLenigan) tumble onto the stage, anticipating their entrance in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the Wilma's next production, which will use the same cast, except that Jah will not return as Hamlet.
Hamlet
Through April 26 at the Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts.
Tickets: $10-25.
Information: 215-546-7824
or wilmatheater.org.
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