The joy of feasting oneself on a repertory theatre's offerings is the hope that, if you are lucky, amidst a plethora of shows of varying quality, you will see something that you will remember. Like, at all. Any part of it. In my judgment, if I remember a single unique line-reading from an actor, and that line-reading stays with me, due to possessing what others have called "the flash of new ideas" and "the charm of an uncommon personality," then that show in my book is a win. Productions in my brain have come and gone, but individual lines spoken by intelligent and caring actors, whose utterance has somehow yielded insight into their reason for being spoken and unlocked previously hidden meaning, those are the burs that stick. They seem to be the touchstone by which my brain judges quality.
An attempted example: Hamlet is speaking with incredulity about how the Player can summon so much grief for a fictional character when he's acting, while Hamlet himself cannot begin to appropriately revenge his actual father's murder by his uncle. Hamlet derides the Player's passion:
"And all for NOTHING*. [well**]. for Hecuba***."
*said with belittling disdain
**not spoken so much as its first syllable touched on before being withdrawn
***with condescension as the eyelids squint through feigned sympathy
Such is a small diagrammatic example of the greatness Amaka Umeh brings to the role of Hamlet. The Nigerian-born actor takes the Stratford Festival stage as the first woman of color to play the melancholy Dane in a repertory tradition that goes back to 1953. While the inclusivity of the casting is momentus at an historically white institution, I'll let others address the social implications of the event, if only because the remarkability of Umeh's performance is so demanding, it necessitates all ink be directed to its cause.
Is Umeh the best Hamlet I've ever seen onstage? Probably (Matt Schwader at American Players Theatre also comes to mind). Different times call for different measures, and Umeh's performance, in director Peter Pasyk's thrilling production, is a perfect Hamlet for the "not okay" generation. Umeh brings an acrobat's physicality to her role, which lends eloquent credence to Hamlet's words, and illuminates his intellect through tactile expression. Umeh's use of Shakespeare's language is a style without obvious precedent: she manages to speak both trippingly yet with total feeling, never sacrificing pace for emotion, or vice versa.
A moment that deserves to be remembered for its heartbreak comes in the "closet scene," the emotional confrontation between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude (Maev Beaty) immediately after Hamlet has killed the spying Polonius (Michael Spencer-Davis). As the Ghost reappears to Hamlet to remind him not to neglect his mission of revenge, Hamlet can see the ghost but Gertrude cannot. Thus, Gertrude is completely convinced of the reality of Hamlet's madness, and Hamlet is sent even further down his contrary route of trying to convince his mother of the exact opposite. The more he tries to appear sane, the crazier he looks. Umeh crawls over to the couch where Gertrude is sitting and takes her hand as she tries to get her to see their former father/husband. Then Matthew Kabwe's Ghost sits on the couch, placing Hamlet in the midst of his living mother and dead father. In an attempted act of comfort, the Ghost takes Hamlet's other hand. In dialogue form, Gertrude and Hamlet square off:
GERTRUDE
To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?
GERTRUDE
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
Nor did you nothing hear?
GERTRUDE
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, LOOK YOU THERE!
Throughout the quoted passage, Umeh's Hamlet desperately pulls her mother's hand towards her father's, attempting to reconnect her parents over the gulf of death. The Ghost ultimately leaves. rendering Hamlet unsuccessful, but never has Hamlet's grief at the dissolving of his parent's marriage been staged more clearly or with stronger feeling.
Other actors in the cast bring their own miniature revelations. Kabwe's Ghost:
"The serpent that DID* sting thy father's life..."
*Highlighted due to its antithetical function, since the Ghost previously mentions an imaginary serpent that supposedly (but did not actually) cause his death.
Spencer-Davis as Polonius:
"I have a daughter, [have while she is mine*]."
*Communicating that the bracketed clause means Ophelia will remain Polonius's daughter until she marries; no Polonius ever makes sense of this parenthetical.
Spencer-Davis again:
"And 'my young mistress,' thus I did bespeak:
'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy* star**: this must not be'."
*Ophelia's
**Social rank/orbit. Another instance of an actor rendering the true and clear meaning of a line this reviewer's ear had something heard but not intentively for over two decades.
Pasyk's production demonstrates innumerable smart conceptions. The Ghost of Hamlet's father appears nearby the Stalinesque state funeral mausoleum where the corpse of Hamlet's father is interred. The see-through coffin of King Hamlet gets covered by flowers and a white cloth to become the royal wedding party's dinner table: this leads to an eerie moment when Umeh yells "methinks I see my father" and upends the setting to attempt to find the dead king, only to see, magic-trick-style, a replaced wooden table (the moment is usually played for laughs). The first speech of the recently-crowned King Claudius (Graham Abbey) is delivered as if the wedding toast at his marriage to Gertrude. Hamlet and Laertes (Austin Eckert) are presented as earnest friends, with a meaningfully-secret handshake to boot. Laertes' "this is too heavy, let me see another" ends up not being a ruse to make his rapier-choosing more believable to an unsuspecting Hamlet, but a futile attempt to not go through with the deadly plot against his once-friend's life (his request is ignored by Claudius). Hamlet's love for Horatio (Jakob Ehman) is so palpable you smile to see them hug for the first time, and don't begrudge Hamlet giving Horatio a peck on the cheek after he tells him that he wears him in his heart's core, yea, in his heart of hearts. While Hamlet also has a secret-handshake with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Norman Yeung and Ijeoma Emesowum), theirs is far too over-elaborate to demonstrate real friendship, and their extensive bits and riffing belie a group of friends whose intimacy is often touted though never felt. Abbey's Claudius is rendered more of an empathic figure by the summoning of R&G even before Hamlet's so-called "madness" begins, simply as a balm to his nephew's grieving spirit (a directorial decision that demands a textual reshuffling of scene order). "To be or not to be" works well when moved to be Hamlet's first soliloquy of act 2, and Claudius's prayer speech is deepened by being turned into a conversation with Polonius, his trusted friend and advisor (Abbey displays desperate, if fruitless, remorse). The banter between Polonius and Hamlet about the elder having played Julius Caesar in college ends with Hamlet serving as imaginary Brutus, and Polonius hamming up a death following's Hamlet mimed coup-de-grace; this bit is darkened when Hamlet shoots the hiding Polonius behind a curtain, and Polonius attends to his neck-wound in the exact same manner as demonstrated in the Caesarian comic business.
Andrea Rankin makes a noble stab at coloring in the missing pieces of Ophelia's character, and it's refreshing to actually see Hamlet and her have a positive relationship at story's beginning, and not have to take it on faith that something special once existed there (seeing a loving if awkward Polonius family is also a nice touch). Rankin makes us believe Ophelia's compliance in the nunnery scene espionage is born out of genuine worry for Hamlet's mental state, and we in the audience worry for Hamlet in the same way. Even if the antic disposition is fake, Umeh clearly takes Hamlet to some unhinged places that no amount of make-believe can account for. The grief at her father's death is extreme enough, and finding out it was murder definitely doesn't help (see Umeh's silent arrival upon Ophelia with "his doublet all unbrac'd"). Umeh doesn't shy away from Hamlet's misogyny in her play-within-the-play scene interactions with Ophelia, using her actor's status as a woman playing a man to make no apology for the Prince's crude sexual comments.
Pasyk's missteps are minor. I wish Ophelia's songs (sound design and composition by Richard Feren) had sounded more of a piece with the production's contemporary setting, and not generically Elizabethan (less Greensleeves, more Phoebe Bridgers). And hopefully continued outings on the Festival's thrust stage will make Pasyk more aware that actors facing off to each other center stage results in a stacked look for house right and house left, even if it may look fine from the centrally-placed stage management table in the rehearsal room. Let's hope he has many, many more opportunities for his work to be staged in this venue and others of its caliber.
While I've been occasionally referring to Umeh's Hamlet with she/her pronouns, Pasyk's production doesn't alter the ones given by Shakespeare (still he/him after 400 years), and we go along with it just fine. Only the snootiest of Bardolators could have an issue with such a decision. Umeh's physical appearance allows her to effortlessly inhabit her own version of a prince while never playing at or winking in the direction of masculinity. She creates a Hamlet who has characteristics of both and neither sexes. Her Hamlet is an invention that could only come via her and spring from within her individual actor's body. Her performance commands the Festival stage with a dynamism that should be the envy of classical theaters everywhere. She has given us the Prince of Denmark for our time. While every actor who plays the role believes themselves to be portraying a hyper-eloquent version of their own autobiography, this cliche may be more true in Umeh's case than many. She makes the words live and walk around. She serves up the poetry from deep within her nervous system. She inhabits the inky cloak fluidly and you never catch her acting.
Umeh, like Hamlet, has that within which passeth show.
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