Plenty of characters die in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but plenty of them live long enough to make us laugh at their misfortunes, smile at their misguided assumptions, and maybe even smirk at their misplaced loyalties in controversial director Sam Gold’s vision/version of this great tragedy. I think we can agree that this is not the way the play is generally expected to hit you. In some ways, Hamlet has always been an entertainment. As an entertainment, the production now at the Public Theater relies heavily on Gold’s presumption that the audience comes prepared with knowledge of what is going on or what is supposed to be going on in the rotten state of Denmark. It worked fine enough for me as well presumably for the large group of theater students from Las Vegas (I asked an usher) who were there at the performance I attended to primarily see film and TV star Oscar Isaac give what actually turned out to be a terrific portrayal of the famously melancholy Dane. Running just under four hours including two intermissions, this “Hamlet” scores heavily with its theatrical pretentions and much less so with its ability to involve us emotionally. Gold starts the play with the audience in the dark (realistically not metaphorically) as he also did with his recent mesmerizing staging of “Othello,” as we simply listen to the opening scene in which appears the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father (Ritchie Coster). Coster returns not only as the ghost but as the dead king who is placed on a folding table atop a pile of artificial flowers. Coster also plays most wily, although with the same visible body tattoos, the dastardly Uncle Claudius, who has hurriedly married Hamlet’s duplicitous mother Gertrude (passively played by Charlayne Woodard). Notwithstanding the growing trend with actors to not conceal body art (an unfortunate trend), the outer attire designed by Kaye Voyce for Hamlet and Ophelia (Gayle Rankin) is distractingly faux funk. And I’m not particularly taken by Isaac parading around for much of the play in a black t-shirt and color-coordinated undershorts. My reaction to Rankin’s bi-polar performance is further compromised by her unattractively braided hair. For some unfathomable reason, Gold has made Ophelia, as he did his also braided Desdemona in Othello, appear as unattractive as possible. Most clever conceits in the play are having Ophelia sing her mad scene, drown herself with a shower hose dragged from the toilet and then throw herself into the grave with Polonius. What a stunner to see them arise side by side having morphed into the two gabby gravediggers. This tragi-comical diversion works perfectly in abetting Gold’s imaginatively conveyed perversity. More unseemly than untimely is the curious use of a toilet metaphorically as a throne for Polonius (a wonderfully wry Peter Friedman). He gets a laugh as does Hamlet who delivers lines with a paper toilet seat hung around his neck. It’s a wonder, nevertheless, that all of Hamlet’s lines ring out with an impressive clarity of thought and execution. Isaac’s exquisite phrasing of the famous soliloquies — “To be or not to be,” “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” — is palpable and made extremely personal. To exhibit true and terrifying madness amidst the free-wheeling wackiness of Gold’s variations on Shakespeare’s play probably wasn’t such a stretch for the actor who rose to fame in films “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Standout support comes from Anatol Usef as Laertes, Keegan-Michael Key expertly playing both Horatio and with comical panache the Player King. Perhaps we are meant to have a good time at Hamlet knowing as we do that the point, even when dipped in poison, is deconstruction.
