The Prince’s New Clothes

McCarter Theatre presents a stripped-down ‘Hamlet.’

By: Jillian Kalonick

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TIMEOFF/MARK CZAJKOWSKI
Rob Campbell (left) and Carrie Preston star in McCarter Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, on stage in Princeton May 3 to June 19.


   In director Daniel Fish’s production of Hamlet, no one is running around with mobile phones or iPods. Nor are they dressed in Elizabethan costumes, or parading in the court at Elsinore.
   "I was very interested in the play being about a family, and that was kind of my way into it," says Mr. Fish. "I thought, what if we took away all the pageantry and the ramparts, and the smoke and mirrors? What if I take eight human beings and confront them with the play?
   "I think it’s a play that speaks to everyone in a very deeply, deeply personal way," he continues. "It’s a story of a man whose father has died and his mother has remarried, and these are very personal issues — father-son, parent-child. The production really grows out of these concerns."
   Mr. Fish, whose production of Hamlet will run at the Berlind Theatre in Princeton May 3 to June 19, found through early workshops that double casting an eight-person production also meant double meanings.
   "There was a really interesting way of doing the play, with eight people," he says, "what I thought was a kind of potent doubling of characters. The actor who plays Claudius plays the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Gertrude and Claudius play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Polonius and Ophelia play two gravediggers digging Ophelia’s grave. You have a dead father and dead child each making a grave, and talking about making a grave for one of them."
   The play features Rob Campbell as Hamlet and Carrie Preston as Ophelia, along with Michael Emerson, Stephanie Roth Haberle, David Margulies, Jesse J. Perez, Haynes Thigpen and Frank Wood.
   The double casting is not a departure from a more traditional Hamlet, because there isn’t one. Shakespeare’s story of the Prince of Denmark has three versions; a first Quatro appeared in 1603, followed by one twice as long the next year, and then a folio version with most of Shakespeare’s other plays.
   "One of the interesting things about this play is there isn’t a single definitive text," says Mr. Fish. "It doesn’t exist. There are at least three versions, and they are vastly different from each other. I pulled from all three of them. I’m using part of the scene that’s probably a very early draft of the play; I was interested in the way that fit in with the casting I was doing."
   For the set, designed by John Conklin, Mr. Fish envisioned something spare and abstract.
   "It’s kind of a room, it might be a rehearsal room, or might be remnants of a ballroom. It’s not so domestic that there’s a living room and a couch and there’s a refrigerator — it’s more about eight people sitting around a table. Is it a kitchen table? Is it a rehearsal table? Is it a conference table?
   "For me, the play is set in the present moment," he continues. "It’s set now. It’s set here. I don’t mean that it’s set in Princeton in 2005, it’s just on whatever night we happen to be coming to the theater, that’s when it’s happening, the way a football game happens, or the way a concert happens. There’s a sense of immediacy, spontaneity, and of invention."
   Kaye Voyce’s costumes are similarly modern — Hamlet and Laertes wear suit jackets, and Ophelia a striped shirt and a skirt.
   "I haven’t given them a lot to hide behind," says Mr. Fish. "There’s not a lot of scenery, there’s not a lot of smoke pouring in, there are no wigs. It’s just them. And some people would say that’s a very unorthodox approach, because they’re not in Elizabethan dress. I think that’s a misnomer. I think actually it’s a completely orthodox approach, because in Shakespeare’s day they wore what was for them modern dress. When they did ‘Julius Caesar,’ they didn’t wear togas."
   Mr. Fish hopes that the 360-seat Berlind Theatre will add to the idea of witnessing a family battle up close, and of being in the moment.
   "The great thing about imagining it in the Berlind is that we can really focus on these human relationships," he says. "The actors don’t have to shout the text. My hope is that the audience can feel like they’re in the room with the play, that it has a kind of immediacy. Not a smallness, but that we’re in the room with this thing that’s unfolding."
   Mr. Fish previously directed The Learned Ladies and The Importance of Being Earnest at McCarter, as well as Loot last season. He recently directed the world premiere of Poor Beck for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His next production is Rocket to the Moon at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. He has worked as associate director to Sir Peter Hall, from whom he adopted his approach to Shakespearean verse.
   "Peter teaches and uses a way of speaking the verse which he had learned from Edith Evans… it’s a rich tradition," says Mr. Fish. "It just has to do with honoring the meter — Shakespeare wrote in 10-syllable lines and there’s a a reason he wrote in 10-syllable lines. It has to do with taking the beat at the end metrical line… The actor has to take a moment and invent what the next line is. You get a kind of poetic logic that you might not get if you just played it straight, a kind of narrative logic of the line."
   For Mr. Fish there is no traditional or nontraditional Hamlet, no one approach, or even one he owns.
   "I did a production of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ that was set in 1956," he says, "in a very specific time and place. I think certain plays lend themselves to that. If the acting is good and it’s honest, I think almost anything can work."
   With his production of Hamlet at McCarter, Mr. Fish is more interested in the human relationships in the play, the theater as a metaphor, and the implications of the double casting.
   "When Gertrude is playing Rosencrantz and Hamlet is playing a scene with Rosencrantz, does Hamlet see his mother or does Hamlet see Rosencrantz?" he says. "Or does Hamlet see his mother playing Rosencrantz? When the ghost walks into the closet scene and finds Hamlet and Gertrude, does Hamlet see the ghost or does Hamlet see Claudius? Does it change? These are all really interesting questions. What the audience sees and what the actors play might be different.
   "The great thing is you can’t control what an audience thinks," he continues. "You can’t anticipate it. They will surprise you. I really think very often we underestimate the capacity of an audience to get involved with something we might not otherwise think they’ll get involved with. We underestimate their imaginations, their intelligence. I think they’re smart, I think they’re curious. I think they’re hungry for great material."
Hamlet plays at the Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton, May 3-June 19. Performances: Tues.-Thurs. 7:30 p.m.; Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 3, 8 p.m.; Sun. 2, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $33-$48, $10 students; pay-what-you-can June 7, 14. For information, call (609) 258-2787. On the Web: www.mccarter.org