We have to acknowledge that audience attention spans have decreased dramatically in recent years, which makes one wonder how Shakespeare’s plays would be different if he were writing for today’s impatient theatergoers.
Offering an answer is Miami-born playwright-director (The Brothers Size) Tarell Alvin McCraney, a former writer-in-residence for Great Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company. Along with Bijan Sheibani, he has whittled down the Bard’s most enduring ― and longest ― play, Hamlet, to a fast-paced and action-packed 90 minutes. And GableStage has again brought McCraney back to South Florida to stage his compact version of the saga of the vengeful, melancholy Danish prince with a gung-ho, multi-cultural cast.
Chances are that your high school English teacher would be appalled by what McCraney considers extraneous in a text that can run to four hours. Gone, for example, is the gravedigger, the skull of Yorick that Hamlet usually ruminates over and no Fortinbras, the king of Norway who traditionally arrives after the high body count climax.
Still, considering the severe edit on the play, the major plot points all survive in a coherent rendering of the play, with a minimum of stylistic gimmicks. You get the impression that McCraney does respect Shakespeare, but wants to turn on reluctant audience members to his powerful yarns.
As Hamlet, Liberty City and Opa-locka-raised Edgar Miguel Sanchez leads a cast that conveys the text in a forceful, contemporary style that just might appeal to the school groups that will see this production following its Biltmore Hotel engagement through Feb. 10.
Like any action movie worth its box office take, this Hamlet grabs us from the start as the prince’s first words are now the “To be or not to be” speech, one of the play’s greatest hits. Most of the rest of the evening unfolds using Shakespeare’s chronology, ending in some flashy swordplay for the title character’s showdown with slain Polonius’s son, Laertes.
Sanchez makes a lively and verbally accomplished Hamlet, with the deep-voiced James Samuel Randolph doubling capably as new king Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet Sr. Peter Haig is a crafty presence as Polonius, even if some of his most memorable lines are absent. For my taste, Mimi Davila’s Ophelia could tone down her steamy mad scenes, but others are bound to disagree.
I wonder whether those who devour Reader’s Digest condensed novels ever then seek out the unabridged texts. If McCraney’s Hamlet does draw in new audiences, that would be great, and even better would be if they then discovered the full play.
HAMLET, GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Through Sunday, Feb. 10. Tickets: $37.50 – $50. Call: (305) 445-1119.
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During the past year, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre has set the bar quite high for itself, with innovative new productions of such classic musicals as Hello, Dolly! and The Music Man. As a result, it is hard to be satisfied with a proficient, but unexceptional rendering of an undistinguished show like Singin’ in the Rain.
I have great affection for the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O’Connor movie musical about Hollywood in the early days of talkies, but with a lazy, over-reverent effort that would become all too common, the 1985 Broadway version barely adapted the film to the strengths of the stage. The over-reverence can be attributed to screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who apparently sat back and admired their clever words from 60 years earlier.
It is not that you will have a bad time at Singin’ in the Rain, for director-choreographer Marc Robin delivers a lavish ― considering the title tune sequence, we might as well call it “splashy” ― production, with a talented cast that largely hails from his Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pa. But with so little divergence from the movie, it begs comparison, unfairly though that may be, and nothing on the Maltz stage is an improvement over, or even lives up to, the movie.
Well, Robin does have a worthy directorial conceit that places the entire show on a sound stage at Monumental Pictures. Consequently, when former vaudevillian-turned-film-star Don Lockwood (Curt Dale Clark) kicks up his heels in the title number, the downpour comes from an indoor studio water effect. Yes, it really rains, as the patrons in the first few rows can attest, and Clark seems to take special enjoyment at sending the puddle water out into the audience.
Anyway, the show concerns how Don and his screechy, dumb blonde co-star Lina Lamont (Emily Stockdale) get stuck in the transition from silent pictures to sound, until he decides to convert The Dueling Cavalier into an all-singing, all-dancing musical. The problem is Lina, who also cannot deliver lines, making her a triple threat. A solution seems to be found when Kathy Selden, a starlet discovery of Lockwood’s, agrees to become the first celluloid voice dubber.
Clark carries the show, singing and dancing, uh, up a storm, though he makes Lockwood too much of a cartoon. Brian Shepard steals the spotlight as Don’s sidekick Cosmo, nimbly recreating the solo schtick of Make ’em Laugh. And willowy Lauren Blackman completes the triangle well as spunky up-and-comer Kathy.
Still, without any new songs, scenes or plot wrinkles, déjà vu sets in. I buy the argument that live theater usually trumps a movie, but chances are you will leave the Maltz wondering why you did not just stay at home and rent the DVD.
SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Through Sunday, Jan. 27. Tickets: Starting at $46. Call: (561) 575-2223.
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“Performance art” are not the two most inviting words in the theatrical lexicon ― by a long shot ― but Mad Cat Theatre Company has become enamored of one of its practitioners, Kristina Wong. After a showcase of her work at the Arsht Center two years ago, the troupe is featuring her again in Cat Lady, which even she concedes is lightweight compared to her other stage pieces.
Still, its offbeat, and frequently over-the-top take on pet ownership, loneliness and impersonal coupling fits the expectations of Mad Cat fans, even if some of the 80-minute show blithely defies comprehension.
Like many performance artists, Los Angeles-based Wong uses her own life as the springboard for her work. Here she explores how her life on the road leaves little room for lasting companionship, except for her loyal, if persnickety cat, Oliver.
Wong is an appealing, nimble performer, but she should have known from W.C. Fields’ caution that working with animals is a sure way to come in second. That is particularly so when the cat in question is played by the ingratiating Ken Clement, sporting a Cheshire Cat grin and a water bottle for indiscriminate spraying.
It is little wonder that Wong closest relationship is with Oliver, since she sees men as mere pick-up artists. She represents the breed with a couple of “wild and crazy guys,” played with smirking abandon by Jessica Farr and Noah Levine. Such denizens of the dating scene learn their technique from training videos, as we see in a snippet of smarmy Johnny Wolf in action.
Although Cat Lady has all the indulgent earmarks of performance art, director-designer Paul Tei has given it a flow and the visual curiosities that flesh out the brief ― but not quite brief enough ― evening into a more theatrical realm. It probably helps it you too, like Wong and Tei, are fixated on felines, but if you are willing to go with the flow, there is probably enough to hold your interest in Cat Lady.
CAT LADY, Mad Cat Theatre Co., The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse, 404 N.W. 26th St., Miami. Through Sunday, Jan. 20. Tickets; $30. Call: (866) 811-4111.