Why "Hamlet' still matters

Since Shakespeare first penned Hamlet, circa 1601, actors of every subsequent generation have attempted to tackle and interpret the title role. The original Hamlet— probably Richard Burbage, Shakespeare's colleague in the Lord Chamberlain's Men company— has been succeeded by a who's who of the English-speaking world's greatest performers, from David Garrick and Edwin Booth to John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier and Ralph Fiennes.

Over the past 15 years, I've seen four Philadelphia actors each emphasize a different facet of the role in local productions. At the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival in 1995, Greg Wood's intelligent and composed Hamlet showed a young scholar returning from Wittenberg, full of eloquent intellectual resolve yet paralyzed when it comes to real action. Wood was the most natural sounding of the four (he was born to declaim verse), but he nonetheless terrified his audience when he gripped a sword with both hands and let it hover inches over the kneeling Claudius, his performance embodying the warning to "beware the fury of a patient man."

Paul Kuhn's Hamlet (Hedgerow Theatre, 1998) exuded boundless mania and charisma that later plummeted into a brooding madness, all of which Kuhn skillfully balanced against a cold ruthlessness. He was my personal favorite of the four, shaping his Hamlet as seductive anti-hero, showing how Shakespeare's script anticipated later echoes of Mad Max or Tyler Durden.

The vigor of a confused James Dean

The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival cast Bill Zielinski (late of Philadelphia, now of Amsterdam) in the title role in 1999. Here was Hamlet as Lord Byron, someone "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Zielinski's voice trembled as he lingered on the monologues with the soul of a poet, and lounged into the role with the reluctant vigor of a confused James Dean (I'm sure I misremember him wearing a white T-shirt), ultimately dispensing his violence with the measured force of a gloved hand.

Lenny Haas delivered the most recent Philadelphia presentation of the role (by a local actor) in 2003 at the Bristol Riverside Theatre. His Hamlet became the antithesis of the "traditional male hero," as Haas infused a feminine delicacy into the role (for years after this performance, I mistakenly thought he was gay), while rendering the soliloquies with an effeminate, cynical melancholy (more suited say, to Blanche Dubois).

For the Lantern's coming production (opening April 7), director Charles McMahon cast Geoff Sobelle, whose wide-ranging performances leave immense room for speculation on how he will perform the role. His work with Pig Iron and his 2008 Fringe piece Fish and Fowl have shown Sobelle as alternately bright, charming, bizarre, flirty, cerebral, physically dexterous, and capable of incredible nuance.

The first existentialist character

But while the theater's best sons—and daughters, too (more than 50 women have put on breeches to play Hamlet)—have attempted the role, I'd argue that even a portrayal by the greatest actor is only a corollary to the most compelling reason to see this play. Philadelphia may have its "One Book" and "One Movie," but if our city— not to mention all of Western culture— needed to nominate one play, we could only choose Shakespeare's Hamlet.

"The Western canon is Shakespeare," Harold Bloom once claimed. I would add that the character of Hamlet is the thread upon which all our male cultural archetypes now unravel. Other scholars have called Hamlet the first modern or first existentialist character— who, unmoored from traditional notions of right and wrong, battles paralysis while trying to complete a task thrust upon him that he knows he shouldn't pursue.

In his actions and words Hamlet embodies every facet of what it means to be a human. To call him irresolute misses the impulsive dagger plunged into Polonius, but to label him as steadfastly capable misses most of the play. He's at times innocent and corrupt, loving and hateful, affectionate yet filled with contempt, philosophical but bawdy, humorous, self-hating, vengeful, reticent and ultimately, pitiful, endearing and despicable. Anyone who can watch this play without the experience of looking into a mirror is either a saint or a liar. Hamlet provides a litmus test for our humanity. I can say this even as I understand, identify with and despise his character.

A chance to bask, if nothing else

A revival of Hamlet offers the opportunity to fulfill one of the central goals of humanism. No matter the theater or actor, the recovery (and reinterpretation) of past works enables us to form anchors with the best creations of history, and to experience art whose limitless interpretations make them inexhaustible for our own self-awareness and reinvention. Even if we don't learn anything new, we can marvel (at past greatness so far unsurpassed), or genuflect, or simply bask in the reflected glow of a masterpiece that demonstrates what's dramatically possible in the art form.

"Read him therefore, and again, and again," advised John Hemminges and Henri Condell, two actors in Shakespeare's company, in their preface to the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays. "And if you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger." I second the motion.




To view Jim Rutter's eight-minute video interview about Hamlet with Charles McMahon and Geoff Sobelle, click here.
To read a response, click here.
To read Robert Zaller's review of the Lantern's Hamlet, click here.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.