The Steel City Shakespeare Center is devoted to bringing theatre to the underserved and breaking down notions that Shakespeare is only accessible to people of a certain class, income or educational level. Choosing to perform their latest production, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, outside of a traditional theater and instead at the Millvale Community Library advances that central tenet.

The community library setting is destabilizing. The distance between performers and attendees is greatly reduced, particularly given the intimate twenty-chair seating and the fact it’s still very much a library, not a library attempting to transform into a theater. Beyond that, the lights are on throughout the production, dissolving the fourth wall between actors and audience. Hamlet becomes fiercely and wonderfully intimate in this simply staged setting, a foil to typical Shakespeare productions, particularly tragedies with a royal setting.

In the many productions of Hamlet I’ve seen, the play invariably feels cold. Hamlet wanders and recites his soliloquies in what always seems to be a vast high-ceilinged hallway. The close setting actually better serves the play; Hamlet’s soliloquies are intensely intimate. They are more whispers in library tones than shouts, near confidential ramblings of a musing mind barely spoken aloud.

The setting isn’t the only critical difference in this production. Director Alan Irvine stages the play with only five cast members, each playing no fewer than three roles. Each cast member wears a monochromatic sash, which he or she rearranges to symbolize different characters. Kelsey Walls gracefully transforms Gertrude’s purple sash into a purple wrap skirt to signify the shift in character to young Ophelia.

Only Hamlet’s character has one role, and Irvine cleverly chooses to cast Hamlet as a woman (Anne Rematt). Irvine strikes a nice balance in the gender-bending casting by not making it feel gratuitous, but using it to make the play feel fresh. The female casting allows Irvine to amplify the relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude (Kelsey Walls). Gertrude’s decision to marry Hamlet’s father’s brother a month after her husband’s passing feels even more like a betrayal with Rematt playing Hamlet. In the presence of Gertrude and new king/father Claudius (Darrin Mosley Jr.), Rematt as Hamlet addresses many lines to her mother. Rematt emphatically transforms a plural you to the singular as she blisteringly stares at and speaks to just Gertrude.

Mosley nicely captures the evolution of Claudius from initially gentle in tone to revealing himself as the conniving killer he is. In fact, Mosley corners the role of the king. He not only plays Claudius, but the ghost of Hamlet’s father as well as the Player King in the play’s play within a play. Fittingly, he also portrays the Gravedigger, which is a clever metaphor for the way in which Claudius sends old Hamlet to his grave and inadvertently digs his own grave in plotting to kill Hamlet, a plan that also leads to his own demise.

In the opening scene, Mosley appears as the ghost of old Hamlet, Hamlet’s father. Before he appears, books start to fall from the shelves, and the ghost pushing them out is a clever introduction to his fearsome spirit. As the ghost, Mosley wears a black cloak. However, when he appears to Hamlet, the cloak’s hood is down, a well-designed visual reinforcement from director Alan Irvine of old Hamlet’s appearance and openness to his son.

In Claudius and Gertrude’s opening scene, Hamlet is off to the side, nestling a book in one hand and half-reading, half-listening. Hamlet sets the book on a shelf, and it’s Liar Temptress Soldier Spy, Karen Abbott’s history of four women who took on men’s roles working as undercover spies during the Civil War. It’s clearly no accident Rematt is holding this particular tome, and it’s a lovely unsung detail from Alan Irvine. Both title and content illuminate the many facets of this production’s Hamlet.

Under Irvine’s direction, Ophelia and Laertes (Jonathan Heidenreich) share a warm, loving sibling banter. They’re seemingly modern as they exchange knowing glances over their father’s head as Polonius (Bob Colbert) rambles on unaware of his blusteringly long narrative. Walls’ Ophelia goes so far as to mockingly mimic her father’s gestures to her brother as he drones on. Thoughtful touches like that humanize the relationship between the siblings and propel the play into the contemporary.

Another inelegance of the typically large open stage is Hamlet’s soliloquies seem awkwardly directed at no one. Here, when Rematt speaks of Claudius, Irvine has her stare in the direction he’s just exited, like one belatedly finding the perfect spitfire comeback. You feel her directed vitriol, exuding Hamlet’s progressive rage that culminates in a stage littered by dead bodies, including Claudius’ and Hamlet’s. While the play’s ending is never a surprise, Irvine and the Steel City Shakespeare Center make it feel fresh and relevant.

The Steel City Shakespeare Center’s production of Hamlet continues through October 14^th at the Millvale Community Library. Tickets have a suggested donation of $15 each, and you can learn more about the Steel City Shakespeare Center online.

Photos courtesy of Steel City Shakespeare Center

Tiffany Raymond has her PhD in 20th century American drama from the University of Southern California where her research focused on labor and social protest theatre. She also has two master’s degrees, one from the University of Southern California and one from the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Pittsburgh with her family. In addition to being a theatre nerd, she’s also a tech geek, avid reader and occasional half-marathon runner.

Categories: Archived Reviews

Tags: FallwithPITR, Hamlet, Millvale Community Library, SCSC, Steel City Shakespeare Center