‘More matter, less art’ – Chicago Reader

In the dark, black letter type appears in supertitles: “Hear me as I will speak.” These words ring strange, not found within the celebrated play, soon shuffled into other anagrams (“I’ll make a wise phrase” “I am a weakish speller”), finally rendering “William Shakespeare.” The sound of the typewriter he never used fills the air.

When the lights come up, we see the end of the story shuffled to the beginning, limp bodies strewn about the stage. 

There are three instances of “shuffling” in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the first within the titular character’s famous monologue on nonbeing:

To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.

The word is twice more given to Claudius as he speaks of earthly misdeeds. Once, he reflects upon his fratricide and its potential impact on his heavenly judgment:

In the corrupted currents of this world / Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice / And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself / Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above; / There is no shuffling, there the action lies / In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d, / Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults / To give in evidence.

Then later, as he goads Laertes into selecting a poisoned sword to stab his opponent:

he, being remiss, / Most generous and free from all contriving / Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease, / Or with a little shuffling, you may choose / A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise / Requite him for your father.

This is all prologue to note that Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté’s The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, which had its U.S. premiere at the Harris Theater over the weekend, admits upfront to a shuffle here and there, a soft-shoe step to conceal a lie or make a deal—a dance done in the name of dreaming—very clever.

From the ending tableau, dancers retrograde into position, Hamlet (Côté) brooding in a chair as raucous laughter and carousal proceed over the wedding feast of his mother, Gertrude (Greta Hodgkinson), and his uncle, Claudius (Robert Glumbek). When the dancing begins, it gives no pause—it is all wicked speed and dexterity for a full hundred minutes. Projected above, characters and scenes are introduced with stage directions (“Enter Ophelia”) and snatches of lines (“Alas, poor Yorick”), while below, each dancer is subjected to strenuous paces—executed with virtuosic triumph. 

The most compelling parts of this production make fantastic use of stagecraft to tell the story in indelible images. Buddy Horatio (Natasha Poon Woo), here rendered a rascally Mercutio-type, pulls Hamlet from the party to the crypt to watch as a shroud morphs into a sheeted ghost, then unfurls to form the screen for a shadow play, deftly revealing the poisoning of his father by his uncle before evanescing into emptiness. 

Horatio pranks Hamlet with a pair of masks, which they don on the backs of their heads, perversely reenacting the poisoning as entertainment. Ophelia (Carleen Zouboules) sits before a mirror, toying with a pendant presumably tendered in affection by Hamlet—later, in her madness, the mirrors multiply, hemming her in ever-expanding infinities of thought. Ophelia again, poised before a rippling silk dripping from the sky, is lifted by unseen hands into a float, embraced within its waves to her untimely demise. “To be or not to be” condensed and transposed—“words words words” into “sword sword sword”—a sport to be practiced, a play of the blade against an artery, for a moment. 

Though at times the cast of nine struggles to make less than two handfuls into a full court, the dancers, individually and together, are excellent—Hodgkinson’s eloquent hands reveal depth and delicacy in a yet-young Gertrude, Woo is a winsome Horatio with buoyant leaps, Côté steady in his portrayal of a frustrated Hamlet, and Connor Mitton and Willem Sadler bring light spirits to the dark tale as frenemies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Yet the choreography is presentational and impressive rather than expressive; it never speaks where it can shout, pitched to split the ears of groundlings, and miming the motions rather than making the psychology and relations of the play really felt. The steps could be fewer, less feverish, and less frontal, more suited as action to the word, perhaps less spectacular. Yet—more matter, less art.