For wacky Hamlet, laughing matters

Theater Review |

Looking for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? He's here somewhere in Elsinore Castle. But you may have to scrape him off the ground, or off the wall, to find him.

The Danish noble, played by the gifted Seattle actor Shawn Law in a new, mixed-bag outdoor version of Shakespeare's monumental tragedy, is not prone to melancholic brooding. Actually, he's quite the cutup.

Law puts on an antic disposition very early in Susanna Wilson's staging of "Hamlet" for Greenstage, offered free last weekend at Woodland Park.

And Law doesn't slip into a more serious mien until Hamlet returns from a near-fatal journey to England, to finally exact revenge on his uncle, Claudius (Vince Brady) — who, you'll recall, murdered Hamlet's monarch father to usurp his crown and queen, Gertrude (Macall Gordon).

Every actor who wears Hamlet's "inky cloak" of grief, and dives into his "To be or not to be" ambivalence, tries to make the role his own.

Law does that, and with such zest and intensity that resistance is futile.

Still, this is one of the wackier Hamlets in local memory — though he may be part of a national trend. A new Central Park staging of the play in New York this summer boasted a zany, hyperkinetic Hamlet, too.

While his castmates serve as comic foils, Law engages in much mugging, mocking, dancing about, flinging himself to the ground, blowing raspberries, jeering at the pompous court busybody Polonius (Allan Armstrong, and traitorous school chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Hamlet as class clown has its thematic limitations. But there is a discernible streak of rough anguish in Law's outing, too — which he could exploit more.

Law and Wilson do pin the performance to a careful, and creative reading of Shakespeare's text (not to mention creative editing: Fortinbras is cut out entirely). Now the line "rest, perturbed spirit" refers to Hamlet (not his father's restive ghost). And such descriptions of the prince as "blasted with ecstasy" are taken literally.

Law's gamble is more than a stunt, amazingly, because he's so compellingly watchable, and he intones the verse with such ease and comprehension it sounds fresh and unfusty.

The cast by and large speaks the speech lucidly, particularly the top-notch Armstrong (a perfect fool of a Polonius) and Beth A. Cooper's loyal Horatio.

But others should heed Hamlet's advice to players about not "strutting" and "bellowing," or "sawing the air" with broad gestures. The worst offender is the melodramatic Brady as Claudius, but Allcorn also over-emotes as Laertes, and Carolyn Marie Monroe's mad scene as Ophelia overworks the hysteria by half.

It turns out, though, that wacky as he is, Law's Hamlet does know a "hawk from a handsaw." And he knows that toning down the funny business at the tragedy's end, in order to grieve Ophelia properly and wield a sword with authority, are princely moves indeed.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com