Hamlet for hams at McCarter

"Come on, Max", said my husband, "It's Hamlet, you can't ruin Hamlet."

Well, today, Mr. Maximalist was proven wrong, by McCarter's production of Hamlet. They played it as a comedy. No, not as a tragedy with Shakespearean comic relief, but as a full blown comedy.

In the first act, the comedy was based on the minimalist set, and the interaction with the audience sitting on stage, but by the second act, the Prince of Denmark, who I was halfway enjoying (the only performance I enjoyed), vacillated wildly, from a crafty young man (not so young, actually, but not as painful as the paunchy middle aged Laertes)to a Jim Carrey-esque clown portraying a mean full blown manic episode, to an insufferably shallow delivery of Hamlet's best known soliloquy. Listening to this version, you would never know that the young prince was considering suicide. It just wasn't funny.

If the point was Hamlet was a reckless manic, it could have been made without slap-stick. Mania can be destructive, and human destruction is never funny.

The anachronisms " tape recorder, flashlights, massive stage lights, and careless 21st century dress were merely annoying, because it was a silly farce anyway. I was too irritated by the disembowelment of Shakespeare to care.

Was "hating on" Shakespeare the point of this? Was there a point at all?

As Mr. Maximalist and I left the theater (after the second act), the other departing patrons expressed that they too had "given up". We also wondered if it was the performance and NOT Superbowl Sunday that kept people away.

For all those who stuck it out until the end, I thank you. It was much easier to drive home quickly.

Finis