Ben Target’s solo show Lorenzo is an end-of-life comedy that is both joyful and surprising. Written and performed by Target (pronounced Tar-ZHAY), and directed by Adam Brace and Lee Griffiths, it is an autobiographical 65 minutes that focuses on a time when Target gave up his work as a comedian to become a live-in caretaker for an aging family friend, “Uncle” Lorenzo Wong.
Playwright Sarah Ruhl and performance-artist Taylor Mac, both recipients of MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” and past finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, are currently at the Signature Theatre for a revival of Ruhl’s 1998 adaptation of Orlando, the 1928 novel by Virginia Woolf. Mac, who’s playing the title role, is renowned as a dramatist but, on this occasion, serves strictly as an actor.
At the outset of Ife Olujobi’s Jordans, a surreal comic-horror satire of racial capitalism and its effects on Black bodies, Jordan (Naomi Lorrain), a Black receptionist at a fashionable event space/production facility, essentially builds the stylish, gleaming set (designed by Matt Saunders). This activity is one of many moments in director Whitney White’s sleek production when Jordan’s unceasing labor in the face of disregard or outright hostility from her all-white co-workers is highlighted. Later, when Jordan’s colleague Emma (Brontë England-Nelson) says in a presentation to their wicked boss, Hailey (Kate Walsh), that the women at the firm are “slaving away,” she explicitly does not include Jordan in her statement.
The title of Lia Romeo’s play Still, it must be clarified, is unrelated to manufacturing moonshine in the mountains of Appalachia. Rather, her wistful two-hander is about seniors reconnecting—the kind of story that pops up periodically in bridal pages about two spouses whose longtime partners have died and who have somehow reconnected with their youthful heartthrobs. The stories carry an inherent charm, one that is aided immeasurably by two superb performers, Jayne Atkinson and Tim Daly.
In addition to introducing the word robot to the English language, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s 1920 sci-fi drama R.U.R. depicted a dystopian world in which scientifically manufactured laborers gradually eradicate humans. The play perfectly captured the anxieties of the burgeoning Machine Age and was a big hit on Broadway in 1922. S. Asher Gelman’s Scarlett Dreams attempts to tap into similar uneasiness as the former Information Age settles into the current Age of Intelligence. With the meteoric advancement and sudden ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI), the play suggests that it may be just a matter of time when people will be controlled by digital avatars, and the difference between reality and virtual reality (VR) will become purely conjectural.
Great love and labor has clearly gone into the performance of Eddie Izzard’s 2½-hour solo Hamlet. The adaptation by Mark Izzard (Eddie’s older brother) is generally true to Shakespeare’s text, the split-level set by Tom Piper is wisely uncluttered, and Izzard delivers Shakespeare’s verse with remarkable ease.
“If a work is quite perfect,” wrote W.H. Auden about Hamlet, “it arouses less controversy and there is less to say about it.” Across four centuries, critics have found plenty to discuss in this longest of Shakespeare’s plays (also one of his most frequently performed). Auden is prominent among those viewing it as severely flawed. Director Robert Icke has joined the colloquy with an absorbing stage production, now at the Park Avenue Armory, that handles the script’s ostensible defects with aplomb and, in so doing, refutes T.S. Eliot’s suggestion that Hamlet is an “artistic failure.”
Waterwell’s production of Hamlet is probably not for the first-timer to Shakespeare’s masterpiece. Under director Tom Ridgely, the tragedy has been reset in Iran of the early 20th century rather than Denmark of the 1500s. Parts of the play are spoken in Farsi, and if, for instance, you didn’t know what Hamlet’s father’s Ghost says to him, you’re going to be out of luck, since the physically and vocally formidable Barzin Akhavan speaks entirely in Farsi. Other passages require familiarity with the play to be understood, notably Hamlet’s exchange with Ophelia about lying in her lap during The Murder of Gonzago, or Hamlet’s crucial plan to insert lines of his own. (The last, however, is covered by some English dialogue later, but until that arises, a new listener would be confused.)
Boris Akunin’s Hamlet. A Version reimagines Shakespeare’s classic tale of political intrigue as a multi-layered murder mystery. Akunin, a Russian writer best known for his Sherlock Holmes–like character Fandorin, which has a cult following, does not write just for thrills. His Hamlet is a tragedy but also a whodunit.
If you have seen Hamlet several times and are likely to be bored with a straightforward rendering, then perhaps the Classic Stage Company’s new modern-dress production, directed by Austin Pendleton, is the one for you. It’s full of bizarre ideas to a fault.
Where to begin? Well, one of the great revenge tragedies no longer has a hero who kills his enemies. This Hamlet is not directly responsible for the deaths of Laertes or Claudius. In the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, the latter cuts Hamlet with the poisoned rapier, then lays it down on the floor. Hamlet charges him like a bull; they wrestle; and Laertes accidentally rolls on top of his sword and wounds himself on the poisoned tip. As for Claudius, the action of Hamlet stabbing the king is omitted. After Gertrude lies dead, Hamlet hands the king the poisoned cup and commands: “Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damnèd Dane/Drink off this potion.” Claudius, berated into suicide, quaffs the drink.
The one person this Hamlet does kill is Polonius, but that’s an accident. Still, weirdness is injected here too. Polonius’s ghost walks out from behind the arras, crosses the stage, and then exits. By comparison, the Ghost of Hamlet’s father—a character who actually has lines—is invisible in this production. Invisible ghosts have been used in tandem with dialogue spoken on tape, but here the Ghost’s words are eliminated as well, as if it were entirely in Hamlet’s imagination (although Francisco, Bernardo, and Marcellus speak of seeing it). And Ophelia’s ghost appears unexpectedly to hover around her own gravesite. So extra-textual ghosts are real, but Shakespeare’s real Ghost doesn’t exist?
If Pendleton has a concept, it appears to be that Hamlet is insane from the get-go, that his imagination is working overtime. That might explain why an uncut, multi-tiered wedding cake sits upstage, some two months after "the funeral meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.” Either the clean-up crew has been on strike, or it’s a symbol weighing on Hamlet’s diseased mind.
Still, troublesome ideas can sometimes be overcome by outstanding acting. But Peter Sarsgaard seems determined to sledgehammer the meter of the verse into little pieces. Actors such as John Gielgud, accounted one of the great 20th-century Hamlets, and directors such as John Barton have advised that if one follows the scansion of Shakespearean verse, it will buoy the actor and the sense will reveal itself. Sarsgaard doesn’t, and he sinks like a stone. He puts in pauses every three words or so. On “a little more than kin…and less than kind,” the delay kills the pun. Moreover, his delivery is so halting throughout that one suspects he hasn’t got the words down. Certainly he’s not letter-perfect in the crucial “To be or not to be,” and lyricism is repeatedly sabotaged.
Gielgud, who directed Richard Burton in the role on Broadway, wrote in Stage Directions that “a Gertrude older than 50 must surely be unconvincing on the stage.” Pendleton has chosen Harris Yulin and Penelope Allen as Claudius and Gertrude. With the Internet at one’s fingertips, it gives nothing away to say that both are in their eighth decade. When Yulin’s skillfully spoken but lethargic Claudius tells Hamlet he wants him to stay at court rather than leave for Wittenberg, you might suspect that it’s because he has his eye on Hamlet as a caregiver.
Pendleton’s casting repeatedly creates inconsistencies. Hamlet’s school chums, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are considerably younger, and Rosencrantz (Scott Parkinson) doubles as the Gravedigger, even though Jim Broaddus, an actor closer to the right age who is superb in smaller parts such as the Player King, would have been more apt. Glenn Fitzgerald as Laertes has a resonant voice and a presence that make one wish he had more to do. Unfortunately, although Hamlet claims to be “fat and scant of breath,” Sarsgaard is clearly in good shape. It’s Fitzgerald’s Laertes, supposedly an athletic and practiced swordsman, who is carrying a few extra pounds.
Ultimately, it’s Stephen Spinella’s Polonius who feels like the best-rounded character. He’s a dapper, instinctively shrewd courtier with warm feelings for his family. Still, the play isn’t called Polonius—though in the hands of Pendleton and Sarsgaard, it’s not so much Hamlet either.
The Classic Stage Company production of Hamlet runs through May 10; evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $65 and may be purchased by visiting www.classicstage/.org.
