Abstract
Hamlet, Prince of Atlanta? For this year's first play for Shakespeare in the Park, director Kenny Leon imagines the erstwhile Dane perhaps as the running mate of Stacey Abrams, whose unsuccessful bid for the Georgia governor's office in 2018 and 2022 as the first black female candidate in the state's history is memorialised by a mammoth billboard-sized political advertisement lying on the ground, taking up most of stage left, a Jeep bearing ELSNOR licence plates parked through a white picket fence far upstage right (scenic design by Beowulf Boritt). Beginning with a barbershop quartet's a capella harmonies instead of 1.1's ghostly embassy (music and additional lyrics by Jason Michael Webb), the lyrics to ‘To Everything There Is a Season’ (quoting Ecclesiastes) and ‘Let It Shine’ surely must be ironic introductions to the solemnities, for the formal funeral procession paying tribute to Old Hamlet's flag-draped coffin flows seamlessly into a gospel performance of ‘Daylight come and we want go home’ (from Harry Belafonte's ‘Banana Boat’) and then Claudius and Gertrude's wedding reception, thrift in furnishing forth the marriage tables indeed. By contrast, the nuptial couple's lavish dress does not economise (costume design by Jessica Jahn), the train of Gertrude's gala-couture gold silk taffeta off-the-shoulder gown trailing behind her, with Claudius (John Douglas Thompson) nattily bespoke-suited in blue, a long red satin stole, a gold chain medallion of state, and a black African-type kufi hat embellished with gold pins, sometimes a President Mobutu or Mugabe, sometimes a warlord – in 4.3, he sucker-punches Hamlet (Ato Blankson-Wood) whose wrists are bound with zip-ties, and hands extra cash to Rosencrantz (Mitchell Winter) and Guildenstern (Brandon Gill) to ensure their friend's summary execution in England. In 3.3, however, Claudius contorts in distress and so fervently appears to seek penitence that Hamlet understandably wishes to seek a more optimal ‘horrid hent’ (88) later than dispatch the vulnerable king now.
Throughout the production, hints of traditional African culture flavour the royal court's appearance (for 5.2's fencing match, Gertrude (Lorraine Toussaint) wears a Nigerian gele head wrap to match the rest of the attendees’ bright floral prints), in distinction to the oversize American military portrait of Old Hamlet, which dominates the ‘fretted’ (2.2.299) wallpapered-façade of the Colonial Federal-style interior State House that tilts slightly backwards. Upstage left, a brick-fronted whole house exterior also lists alarmingly askew, a far edge sheared away to reveal a cross-section of lathing and plaster – a visual anatomising of the state of the state – a large American flag flying at a 45-degree angle from a pole staked on the front lawn. More official flags flank the ornate centre double doors, put to more sinister purpose during Laertes’ short-lived rebellion in 4.5, when a local guard commandeers a metal flagpole as a defensive barrier, reinforcing the door handles. With this pointed allusion to the 6 January 2021 mainly white-led insurrection at the US Capitol (Laertes is played by a white actor (Nick Rehberger) as are Polonius, Rosencrantz, the gravedigging duo, and perhaps Ophelia), Leon telegraphs to the audience there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, painting this staging's diverse figures of power with the same brush.
Accordingly, why Hamlet feels he ‘lacks advancement’ (3.2.322) in Claudius’ Atlanta must be chalked up to internecine treachery, possibly rendered by Leon's staging as a split between new world American vs. traditional African cultural values, or other more nebulous manifestations of institutional racism rather than the failure of black individuals (such as Abrams) to secure Elsinore's ostensibly elective, quasi-hereditary crown. We are introduced to a baleful Hamlet in 1.2, sitting on the edge of the stage (elevated a few metres to reveal another cross-section view, decaying soil and skulls just below the lawn) and clapping in a slow, heavily sardonic fashion while the wedding guests cheerfully toast the nuptials. In Leon's production, Hamlet opts to express his state as ‘sullied’ (rather than ‘solid’ or ‘sallied’ [130]) by his kinship with his aunt-mother and uncle-father – after promising the ghost to ‘sweep to [his] revenge’ (1.5.30), the Prince carries a dagger always at the ready, perhaps a bit less melancholy and a little more in ‘kind’ (1.2.65) with the ruthless though affable Claudius than many Hamlets.
The Prince fashions himself after Old Hamlet's soldier portrait, wearing a black military jacket and boots, a sash at the waist, and a silk epaulet over one shoulder, and later a grey hoodie to costume his ‘antic disposition’, his sombre dress and formal affect setting Blankson-Wood apart from the more casual, blingy American-rapper chic of Horatio (Warner Miller) and the players (jean shorts, gold watches, gold chains, giant hoop earrings, trainers, music-video bright neons and candy colours). This gulf in cultural tastes is heavily underscored by the Player's (Mikhail Calliste) freewheeling rap adaptation of the tale of Priam's murder, echoed by the troupe's refrain ‘the gods cry’, all of which bears Horatio's stamp rather than Hamlet's (as will the ‘Mousetrap’ later). Similarly, the other characters’ styling all contrasts Hamlet's, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as escapees from a country club (yellow cardigans with tennis racket prints, plaid pants, loafers without socks, newsboy caps, and little backpacks) and Polonius (Daniel Pearce) as a white-suited Colonel Sanders in sensible brown saddle shoes. Polonius’ counsel urging the importance of preserving virginity for the demure Ophelia (Solea Pfeiffer, in denim bustiers, boho gauzy florals, and a blonde braid crowning her head), advice frequently now outdated for contemporary re-envisionings of the play, here does accord with the conservative social values of some Southern gentility.
Blankson-Wood is more in his element bathing in the cold blue spotlight of his longer soliloquies (lighting design by Allen Lee Hughes). In 2.2, he conveys an earnest enough wish for ‘grounds/more relative than this’ (592–93) to establish Claudius’ guilt, though his encounter with the ghost in 1.5 seems to leave him with little ambiguity for the necessity of action. Heralding the demonic spirit's appearance in 1.4, the stage vibrates in concert with an initially disorienting animation of the upstage back wall's apparently fixed wallpaper design, the now-wavering fractal pattern revealed to be a projected image on a very large, looming screen, a more technicolour version of Richard Burton's 1964 encounter. Next door, the rows of windows in the house's listing three-story façade flash green and orange with the ghost's reverberating voiceover. His demand to ‘swear’ resonates through the theatre, not merely ‘the cellarage’ (159), hic et ubique. More akin to a poltergeist, Old Hamlet's image, cast upon the wall as a double of his painted portrait below, blurs into a projected close-up of Blankson-Wood's face, speaking his lines onscreen unsynchronised to the audience's live auditory. Simultaneously, we are aware that Hamlet is demonically possessed, eyes rolling back as he becomes another channel for the ghost's speech. Once again ‘[un]coupled from hell’ (93), he falls to the ground. It's clearly manifest why Hamlet is not dedicated to merely playacting distraction (limited mainly to sticking out his tongue for selfies with his phone and sounding sour notes on the pipe he gestures obscenely for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to ‘play upon’ [3.2.333]). Instead he is immediately committed to the revenge the ghost demands, despite in 3.1. pausing over the ‘rub’ inherent to ‘that sleep of death’, being certainly well apprised of ‘what dreams may come’ (66, 67). As if on cue, a bat flits across the stage of the outdoor Delacorte Theater.
Hamlet is simply uninterested in Ophelia, who reacts to his invective in the nunnery scene as a series of micro-aggressions. Though it is hard to imagine this mismatched pair were ever a romantic Atlanta power couple, Hamlet is attuned enough to Ophelia's speech for her Polonius-like aphorism about returning ‘rich gifts’ (102) to trigger his suspicion that she is not ‘fair’ (105). She sulks resentfully as the troupe returns for the play-within-the-play, a hip-hop dance routine simulcast again on the projection wall (another near-demonic visitation?), a mad 30-second blitz of colour and sound merely signifying fury – the danced mime of the Player Queen smacking the Player King and flipping him ‘the hand’ just before he is poisoned by Lucianus is over so quickly, and with so few lines, the scene barely registers before the troupe scampers out hastily, conscious of the ‘offence/in’t’ (3.2.218–19), but tedious the staging is not.
The remaining text is similarly attenuated, Fortinbras entirely cut, leaving more frenetic action and fewer lines to signal whole scenes. For the closet scene set in Gertrude's ornate boudoir, the notorious bed rises up out of the same under-stage recess as Old Hamlet's flag-draped coffin sank slowly into at play's start, hells of a different sort for Hamlet, who exhorts Gertrude to compare the kings’ portraits on his mobile phone. After this scene, Gertrude takes to drink, helping herself from a large decanter for her interview with the mad Ophelia and getting choked up with emotion when she relays news of her drowning. Modern-day Ophelias know they should style themselves after classic nineteenth-century madwomen with flowing locks, bare feet, and, for a more contemporary look, streaks of leaking black mascara, but Leon endows Pfeiffer with a new swan song at the end of her funeral – a ghost in a white dress processing slowly across the stage, she steps into her open grave where her coffin has already been lowered and disappears below the ground as water imagery projected onto the wall above ripples past.
The gravedigger (Greg Hildreth) playfully tosses skulls out of the grave (he has been busy shovelling real soil out of it) and enjoys exchanging witticisms with Hamlet, who returns to Denmark wearing a backpack and a loose white shirt (a souvenir from his escapade with the pirates?), the graveyard scene the natural backdrop for Blankson-Wood's characteristic gravitas.
The court is seated facing the audience for the initial holiday atmosphere of the fencing match of 5.2, Gertrude merrily defying Claudius’ injunction to drink. Despite Hamlet's mostly unwavering attitude to achieving revenge against his uncle since his possession by the demonic ghost, Claudius yet undercuts Hamlet's actions in the final melée: once the king is confronted with Gertrude's direct accusation, ‘the drink, the drink’, he grabs Hamlet's envenomed rapier with his bare hands. The final moments are indeed heavy with their drink, for Hamlet must be satisfied with poisoning Claudius with the remaining wine, and he makes a kind of toast to his own death, holding his glass aloft to Horatio, who returns the assembled court to a refrain of the players’ earlier song, ‘gods cry’: in vino veritas.