Hamlet (St Ann's Warehouse)

See it if you think that there is something intriguing about a woman playing Hamlet There is nothing new except unnecessary filler dialogue. Tedious

Don't see it if You are looking for either a different take on the motivation or a brilliant portrayal of the characters. There is neither here. Pedestrian

See it if You love Hamlet and Shakespeare and modern interpretations of the play.

Don't see it if you can't sit in a theater for 3.5 hours.

See it if You want to see a luminous performance by Ruth Negga almost obscured by cluttered and cliched staging/supporting cast.

Don't see it if You want visual coherence, you don't like unnecessary sexual violence imagery that doesn't have a CW for some reason, trump imagery.

Also Farber takes a few big textual swings with staging the soliloquies as monologues, and most of them are misses.

Unfortunately, those are the only real risks she takes in this production, which is otherwise a traditional staging meant to showcase Ruth Negga's charismatic Hamlet.

What's done to Ophelia in this production is thoughtless at best, and gratuitous for its own sake at worst. The portrayal of her uses inexplicable nudity and implied sexual violence that feel at odds with the text, and make her harrowing textual descent into madness feel like an afterthought.

The gravediggers/players/death figures are fantastic, but are deployed heavy-handedly, and feel like escapees from a yet-unwritten McDonagh play.

Quibbles: Why, in a world where every guard has an AK-47 like a UN Peacekeeper, does Hamlet wave a tiny toy knife? Why the Trump-Claudius?

Another entry in the big-money, high-concept Shakespeare Machine, but with a luminous lead performance that almost saves it.... Read more Read less