The calendar wants us to wait a few weeks, but we had our own Magical Midsummer Night in Forest Park last night. A glorious full moon, ideal temperatures for sitting in the Shakespeare Glen on Art Hill, passionate performances on the stage and maybe some under the trees and out of sight as well. It was the pluperfect setting for opening night of the 10th Shakespeare Festival St. Louis and a highly entertaining "Hamlet," produced with all due respect for what is perhaps the world's most famous play.
Bruce Longworth's direction was dead-on, with a little more humor and a little more rage than is often seen. Jim Butz delivered a sensational performance in the title role, and Anderson Matthews' Polonius was perfect. Matthews easily brought out the humor in the pompous posing of Hamlet's would-be father-in-law, and his rich, luscious tones added all the necessary emphasis. And yet, when he summed up everything in his paternal advice column, the one that sums up with, "To thine own self be true. . . .," the pomposity disappeared in favor of the passion of parental love, as strong as that shown by Butz after a visit from his father's ghost. And when you think about it, it's pretty good advice. Butz' rage was visible, and he moved beautifully back and forth between fierce anger and the silliness of the poses he struck and language he used in order to hide his plotting behind a mask of craziness.
It was an evening that should make St. Louisans very proud. Most of the talent, both in front of and behind the (imaginary) curtain, was locally grown, trained or seasoned. Jason Cannon, Whit Reichert, John Rensenhouse, Gary Glasgow, Terry Meddows, Aaron Orion Baker, Butz and Matthews are familiar acting names to St. Louis theater-goers, as are technical talents like Jim Burwinkel (set), Dorothy Marshall Englis (costumes), John Wylie (lights), Robin Weatherall (music), Champe Leary (stage manager) and Longworth. All are deserving of high marks. And as usual, there was a lot of younger talent from prestigious schools and theater companies, like Kimiye Corwin, Justin Blanchard, Matthew Folsom and Deanne Lorette.
For its 10th anniversary production, and the first under new executive Rick Dildine, the theater went all out, and succeeded on every level. Inglis' costume for Ophelia (Corwin) was gorgeous, as were the white ones for the Players. Burwinkel's set of the castle at Elsinore was simple, yet had room for a variety of entrances and exits that seemed natural. At the same time, while the Gravediggers (Reichert and Cale Haupert) made a proper entrance through the grass at stage left, it was only a small tussle before imagination took over and they dug the grave in the middle of the stage so that Reichert could delight with a speech to his shovel before he found "poor Yorick" in the grave. Reichert popped up in drag as one of the Players and generally brought a light-hearted note to the proceedings.
Jason Cannon, as Horatio, was a good and loyal friend, and Rob Krakovski was strong in two roles, as the Player King and the Ghost of Hamlet's father, also named Hamlet, who could therefore be described as the Ghost of Hamlet Past. Corwin's Ophelia had some high spots, as did Lorette as Gertrude, who loved not wisely but too often in a small nation. Rensenhouse, as the villainous Claudius, was a man possessed and pursued by Evil, but as he found himself in deeper trouble as the play went on, his voice became whinier, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar and not like someone who seduced his sister-in-law and poisoned his brother.
That last sentence shows how a play that features six murders and a suicide, with four different causes of death and lots of sex, violence, revenge, jealousy and all those other family values can be 500 years old and still going strong. Ripped from the headlines, indeed!
An outstanding production.
"Hamlet," by the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival in Shakespeare Glen (just east of the St. Louis Art Museum on Art Hill), through June 20, with performances nightly at 8 except Tuesdays and June 5. Free.
-Joe
I wish Jim would stop telling people he was "planning to become a monk". It's insulting to the abbey--like saying "I was planning to become a Navy SEAL" because he once talked to some of them.
Posted by: Geoffery Steubens | April 27, 2020 at 04:13 AM