Pensive and Persuasive: "Hamlet" at Shakespeare & Company

Actor Jason Asprey, as Hamlet, is smoldering, dark, and inwardly emotive.

During recent seasons, the actor has impressed as a supportive, significant player in a number of productions staged by the Lenox company. This time around, he is furious when finding out that his mother Gertrude (played by Asprey's real life actual mother, Tina Packer) was complicit in the death of Hamlet's father. Hamlet will avenge that murder.

Hamlet inadvertently kills Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain. Playing Polonius is Dennis Krausnick, who happens to be married (again in real life) to Tina Packer. So, Krausnick is stepfather to Jason Asprey.

Hamlet, after accidentally stabbing Polonius to death, is exiled. Previously, Hamlet and Polonius' daughter Ophelia (striking, dangerous-looking Elizabeth Raetz) demonstrated obvious feelings for one another. Now, however, goes mad, reappears with a wreath of mismatching branches around her head, and eventually drowns.

Laertes (played by Kevin O'Donnell) challenges Hamlet to a duel and eventually kills the prince. Laertes goes down, too; Gertrude drinks poison and falls.

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Director Eleanor Holdridge has cut the script to three hours playing time. The initial scene which often features, somehow or other, a menacing ghost is eliminated. Replacing it with "To be and not to be...." out of time sequence doesn't work especially well. And, one misses specter.

During its first hour, S&Co seems a good production with several great moments. Thereafter, it becomes a sterling presentation (except for an occasional lull). Asprey gets better as the plot unfolds. The actor is thirty-eight years old; sometimes he is youthful but, at other moments, he wears the countenance of one who realizes he carries the intellectual/emotional weight of too many upon his shoulders.

Asprey is wiry, intense, and introspective. As is the case with virtually every actor Shakespeare & Company trains, his enunciation and diction are enviable. Krusnick plays down Polonius but it works. Packer, a woman who typically lights up any room she enters with her very presence, keeps Gertrude under control. Hers is a character who hopes to move forward but knows better. Packer smiles often but perhaps these looks are often rueful.

My experience with her tells me that she knows "Hamlet" inside and out. She has memorized much of the canon. As an actor within the context of this version, though, she carefully maintains her role without overstepping.

Kevin Coleman choregraphed the riveting fight scene at the play's conclusion. Coleman (as actors Asprey and O'Donnell demonstate) is a precious resource. The swordplay is authentic, exciting, and bold.

I know: Coleman staged such a scene for community college actor I directed half a dozen years back. Coleman (also an actor, director, and educator) cannot be undervalued.

Frankly, I believe that Holdridge's attempt to create "electrical synapse impulses" which represent Hamlet's brain doesn't quite make it. The jolts are inoffensive but they are not particularly effective.

On the whole, this "Hamlet" piques and maintains interest. That Asprey remains "under" the top works to this production's advantage.