When does a 500-year-old classic appear to have ripped off a new play? “Fat Ham” and “Hamlet” are performing concurrently in New York City, and if you haven’t seen either, be sure to check out James Ijames’s novel riff on the Bard, now on Broadway for only a few more performances. Skip the original, which opened Wednesday at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
“Ripped off” may be too strong. “Weak imitation” is more apt. Kenny Leon directs this “Hamlet,” and his cribbing of “Fat Ham” is most obvious when Claudius (John Douglas Thompson) and Gertrude (Lorraine Toussaint) make out in public and all their underlings have to turn away to hide their smirks. It’s not the only time the classic seems to be a retread of the much newer version.
Ijames achieves a real coup de theatre by having Claudius and the Ghost of Hamlet’s father played by the same actor (Billy Eugene Jones). Leon achieves very mixed results here. Sometimes the Ghost in his “Hamlet” is suggested by Jeff Sugg’s projections, which recall the sci-fi monster in “The Forbidden Planet” once the thing has been electrified. And sometimes the Ghost inhabits Hamlet himself. Playing what is one of the most daunting title roles ever written, “Slave Play” standout Ato Blankson-Wood doesn’t need Sugg’s special effects. This Hamlet as inhabited by his father’s spirit is absolutely chilling.
Justin Ellington’s sound design helps by giving the spectral voice an ominous echo, which is actually the prerecorded voice of Samuel L. Jackson. Most impressive is not the way Blankson-Wood lip-synchs, which is expert; rather, it’s the twisted contortions of his body that reduce this Hamlet to a human-size puppet. He even manages to show us nothing but the whites of his eyes. Which is awesome for about two or three minutes.
Elsewhere, the actor is much more down to earth, although a bit scattered. He presents a very elegant and aristocratic Hamlet, not all that removed from the classic hand-on-the-mantle variety that was popular on the British stage before actors of the Angry Young Man generation took over.
Blankson-Wood’s Hamlet is super friendly with Horatio (Warner Miller), brutal with Ophelia (Solea Pfeiffer), skeptical of Rosencrantz (Mitchell Winter) and Guildenstern (Brandon Gill), crazy as hell with Polonious (Daniel Pearce), wounded with Gertrude and contemptuous of Claudius. If not always as riveting as the possessed and eyeball-rolling Hamlet, this scattershot approach to the character makes sense. The actor also handles the poetry beautifully, and never counters the iambic pentameter with the harsh American delivery employed here by Pearce and Miller.
But where, oh where, is this Hamlet experiencing his tragedy?
Beowulf Borit’s set is part “West Wing,” complete with the ol’ Stars and Stripes, and part “The Wizard of Oz,” with Dorothy’s Kansas house having landed in Cuba — if that island had somehow been converted into America’s 51st state. Oh yes, and along the way we are treated to the Harry Belafonte classic “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).”
Ijames’s best rewrite of Shakespeare is his turning the play-within-a-play into a game of charades in “Fat Ham.” Leon, only somewhat more wedded to Shakespeare’s script, turns the players into rappers, but drops that conceit as soon as it comes to the Mousetrap. In Leon’s staging, those rappers are now mimes and Hamlet narrates the murder plot, which clearly makes him the architect of this snare and not the mute players. In other words, it completely defeats Hamlet’s purpose for employing the players in the first place.
As a result, this “Hamlet” makes you feel sorry for Claudius and Gertrude, with both Thompson and Toussaint presenting genuinely pained parents. Hamlet’s mistaken murder of Polonius has an oddly calming effect on Blankson-Wood’s mercurial performance, as if killing somebody (anybody!) has alone fulfilled his goal. As this Hamlet retreats — or, perhaps, loses his way — others rush in to fill the dramatic void: Pfeiffer goes completely Bette Davis/Baby Jane with Ophelia’s mad scene, and Tyrone Mitchell Henderson turns Osric into a caricature that would have forced Franklin Pangborn to strap down his own wrists.
“Fat Ham” started at the Public Theater, which is also presenting this “Hamlet.” Not long ago, the Public delivered a revelatory “Hamlet” starring Oscar Isaac and directed by Sam Gold. A highpoint in that production was seeing its Ophelia (Gayle Rankin) morph into the Gravedigger. That cemetery scene in this Central Park staging lacks focus, and Leon’s bloody finale, beyond being cursed with Henderson’s intensely fey Osric, ends with a reprise of an original song, “God’s Cry,” written by Colby Lewis and Jason Michael Webb. It’s not enough that umpteen murders are committed on stage in record time. This “Hamlet” needs to remind us in song, “I could tell you a tale, gods cry, god cry, god cry, I could make the gods cry.”
The Public Theater scored bigtime with Ijames’s “Fat Ham” and Gold’s “Hamlet.” As odds go, two out of three is pretty good when it comes to Shakespeare’s moody Dane.
