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“ranney” as Gravedigger and Sara Clark as Hamlet P H OTO : M I K K I S C H A F F N E R
Changing Tradition With Sara Clark in the title role, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company offers new ways to experience Hamlet R E V I E W BY R I C K P E N D E R
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amlet is Shakespeare’s longest play. If everything he wrote for the piece ends up on stage, a production would take nearly five hours. And the role of Hamlet — the conflicted prince of Denmark, wrestling with how to avenge his father’s murder — is the largest Shakespeare created. It is a character almost always brought to life by a male actor. None of this applies to Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s (CSC) current production of Hamlet — the running time (with an intermission) is less than two and a half hours, and the title role is played by CSC veteran Sara Clark as a perplexed, fiery, witty woman.
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The production features many more differences, too, including the performance’s opening lines. Instead of the traditional first scene featuring castle guards at night, Hamlet pronounces the show’s most famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” which typically happens about midway through the play. Why these changes? Director Sarah Lynn Brown not only staged this production, but she also made the “cutting,” or the rearrangement of the script. By launching immediately into Hamlet’s well-known speech at the late king’s funeral, the audience gets insight into her state of mind right off
MARCH 9, 2022 - MARCH 22, 2022
the bat. With Clark’s precise pausingand-restarting rendition, it’s quickly demonstrated that Hamlet is furious, but uncertain about what’s to be done. Brown’s rearrangement of material goes much further. The king’s ghost is omnipresent in this production; he is usually portrayed only briefly in the first scene as he materializes to urge Hamlet to “Remember me!” In fact, all the actors are constantly present, sitting upstage in straight-back chairs, standing for moments of action. The king (played ominously by Jared Joplin) rises from an abstract tomb at center stage and almost never leaves. As various characters meet their demise, he is close at hand, sometimes overseeing a costume change to designate their departure. In addition to reducing the length of the show, Brown’s adaptation has added material from other Shakespearean works, including Macbeth, Richard III and King John. These amplify and add texture and
motivation to Ophelia (Angelique Archer), whose relationship to a female Hamlet has additional dimensions of confusion, frustration and eventually suicidal madness. With Hamlet portrayed as a young woman, she and her mother, Queen Gertrude (Sara Mackie), have a different relationship than in most productions of the play. Gertrude is compromised because her new husband, King Claudius (Jim Hopkins), is Hamlet’s uncle. He is also Gertrude’s former brother-in-law and the murderer of the king. Mackie’s Gertrude is more sympathetic and maternal than usual in her interactions with Hamlet, tinged with fear and uncertainty. As Claudius, Hopkins employs a smarmy, ingratiating exterior to mask his fears about his crime being uncovered. Guest actor “ranney” delivers two memorable roles — the loquacious, pontificating Polonius, and the comicrelief Gravedigger. His latter graveside performance, replete with a handful
