By SHARON EBERSON
The thing about Hamlet on the page, stage or screen, it is always a reinterpretation of the master work by William Shakespeare, with vibes that span centuries since it first appeared, on the cusp of the 17th century.
Hamlet: The Bad Quarto, a script that predates the best-loved published Folio, employs some names, phrasing and layering that resemble an early draft, before the Bard really got going on the eloquence and rhythms that set him apart from all who came before or thereafter. Yet, taken for all, The Bad Quarto doesn’t seem so very different by comparison. Rare in presentation, it is an exhilarating treat to experience the play now onstage at the Rauh Studio Theatre in Oakland, presented by director Jeremy Seghers.
The youthful casting of The Bad Quarto, led by Ayden Freed’s tortured Hamlet, wily and wild-eyed, aggressively athletic or suffering in silence, yields dividends in accepting Shakespeare’s well-known premise:
The Prince of Denmark has returned from university to find his mother married to his uncle, with his father just two months dead. All that follows is driven by Hamlet’s antic indecision over vengeance for his father’s murder. As much as in any version of Hamlet, it is the story we know, the fate of the characters sealed, their ruin inevitable.
Freed wraps tension and clarity around well-known phrases (“Frailty, they name is woman”), as well as those that bring out the differences between the Quarto and the Folio scripts.
When “To be or not to be” is followed by, “Ay there’s the point,” with more journalistic than poetic prose, you may be taken aback, but I found it fascinating to lean into this “undiscovered country.” The added presence of the ill-fated Ofelia (Ailka Samora, delightful on meeting, later, deliriously, heartbreakingly possessed) there is no discernible difference in meaning or emotion.
The youthful gusto of this pair, along with Ryan Rattley’s vigorous Laertes and Andrew Perfetti’s steadfast Horatio, set this Hamlet apart from many others I have seen.
As Hamlet’s mother, Gertred, Joanna Lowe’s transition from obliviously happy to shock and despair is heartwrenching, while Johnny Patalano’s performance as King Claudius, committer of fratricide and regicide, gives off Godfather energy. Shakespearean actor Brett Sullivan Santry is all bluster and opportunism as Corambis (Polonius, in the Folio), devoted father to Laertes and Ofelia.
If some names seem jarringly different from Quarto to Folio, unless you’re a diehard Shakespearean scholar or just determined to be contrary, be not nitpicky. Best to sit back and take in what is presented here as a version of Hamlet, just as you might with Suzy Eddie Izzard’s acclaimed solo performance of The Tragedy of Hamlet.
The previous interpretation in my own experience was a slimmed down script, with modern accoutrements, staged outdoors on a grand scale by Quantum Theatre. In high contrast, The Bad Quarto of Segher’s vision is performed in an intimate black box, with three step ladders the only furnishings. The oeuvre echoes the spareness of a Peter Brook production, with lighting that exudes eeriness, and costumes appropriately luxe, or befitting the drawling Rossencraft and Gilderstone (Jordan Coury and Lorna Lominac).
There were some chuckles by the audience at the first mentions of their character names, but once that was out of the way, they were just the same inept characters whose betrayal and fate is inevitable.
As the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, David Nackman is more Sopranos than otherworldly, but as a bantering gravedigger, he adds that desirable dose of comedy to the unfolding tragedy.
To nitpick a bit, the constant flashing of switchblades, rather than foreboding, became distracting. The lithe and limber Freed expressed more despair and deception by melting into a ball of anguish or slipping through a ladder rung than when flashing and then pocketing a knife.
All the flashpoints you could want are right there in Hamlet: The Bad Quarto, in a production that does service both to theater’s most famous youthful procrastinator, and a sturdy play that, by any other name, stands up to creative reinterpretation.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Hamlet: The Bad Quarto is at the Richard E. Rauh Studio Theatre, The Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland, June 19-22 and 26-28, 2026. Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hamlet-the-bad-quarto-tickets-1987011305303.
Categories: Arts and Ideas
Leave a Reply