I had looked forward with great anticipation to seeing Hamlet at A Noise Within in Glendale. Not because I needed to see another Hamlet, but to see some interpretations by the talented director (Michael Michetti, Co-Artistic Director of Boson Court in Pasadena) and to see Freddy Douglas, the fine British actor who was so good in last season’s Henry The Fourth Part One. Sad to say I was disappointed on both counts.
The best Hamlets are usually those whose interpretation is close to their own personality. Hamlet is like a reluctant actor cast in the wrong play. Shakespeare, of course, knew actors and the theatre. And Hamlet is full of theatrical metaphor. Hamlet acts mad to disguise his true intentions. He chooses a play which he names The Mousetrap to catch the conscience of the king. Shakespeare even has an acting troupe stop in to help the plot along, and Hamlet delivers a speech, one of the many famous ones but here cut, about how actors should act their parts.
Well, the actors, or rather several of them, seemed to have overlooked this advice. Francois Giroday, usually a fine actor, is overripe, with rolled speech and English pronunciation. But the worst offender is Douglas himself (and even he doesn’t sound all that English). From the start he works at such a high pitch he has nowhere to go. He overacts and overreaches, and the result is that his Hamlet is unsympathetic.
The fault here may be with Michetti’s concept, in which Hamlet is mad from the beginning. It doesn’t help that he has a scene with himself as the Ghost. I don’t know what the students thought who saw this, but it was distinctly odd. Actually I preferred Douglas’ Ghost to his Hamlet.
Perhaps it was the decision to make Hamlet hyper-suicidal that pushed the play into high melodrama. When Laertes jumps into Ophelia’s grave (two Lucite tables and a sheet as the body), grabs the sheet and hugs it, the show tips into camp. I am sure the set didn’t help. A Noise Within usually has very simple but artistically pleasing sets. I was shocked to learn that the theatre doesn’t have a trap door (maybe because they rent). Perhaps Hamlet should have waited for the new space the company is getting in a few years.
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