Celebrating its 25th anniversary season, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival reaches for its namesake playwright’s best known — and best — work, Hamlet. And though the company is still reeling from the loss of its most skilled actor, director and dramaturg, Kevin Crawford, the current production points to a future for the classical troupe beyond him.
Kyle Schnack, a reliable supporting player in recent years, moves into the spotlight as the melancholy prince out to avenge the murder of his father by his uncle Claudius, who quickly assumed the crown and married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Schnack’s approach is far more manic than depressive, but he demonstrates a facility for the classical language that trumps the buoyant interpretation.
Trent Stephens takes over the director’s chair, sticking closely to the Festival’s long-standing habit of shaking up the production and editing down the text. The action still occurs in Elsinore, but in a present-day Denmark of smartphones, jet planes and handguns. (In fact, handguns are banned in the country, but let’s gloss over that research tidbit.) Some of the updating is amusing, but as the company proved previously, but ignored now, substituting gunfire for swordplay is a theatrical comedown.
Presumably the contemporary touches are intended to make the play more accessible for the audience, but more often than not they break the dramatic mood and take us outside the play. The script-trimming is actually rather effective, losing only a few minor characters and lesser verbiage, leaving the Bard’s more familiar quotes intact. And Stephens either found a new crop of performers or gave them a crash course in Elizabethan verse, resulting in one of the best spoken Festival productions in memory.
Gone are the numerous actors at sea with the text. Well, there is Carly Lopez’ Ophelia in the debit column, but Zach Myers makes an imposing King Claudius (and doubles as the ghost of Hamlet’s father), while Darryl Willis handles advice-spouting Polonius sagely and capably. One wonders if the Festival had a dearth of male actors at its auditions, for what else could explain the gender switch of Laertes to a woman? The same goes for Hamlet’s college chums, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, now coeds, with a few judicious pronoun changes.
Still, as it has for most of its 25 years, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival again proves with its Hamlet that one can tamper with the plays of Shakespeare, but it is exceedingly hard to ruin them.
HAMLET, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival at Seabreeze Amphitheatre, Carlin Park, A1A and Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Through Sunday. Free, $5 donation suggested. 561-762-8552.
No one should mind the shrinkage in the script of George M!, a weak biographical narrative whose only function is to get us from one George M. Cohan song to the next. So give the Wick Theatre and director Norb Joerder credit for boiling this short-lived musical from 1968 down to a concert, keeping its two dozen vintage songs intact.
So go and enjoy such bombastic, patriotic standards as “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Over There” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” And if you happen to become involved in Cohan’s life story as well, consider that a bonus. After all, no one can deny Cohan’s talent and ambition, but the legendary showman was so egotistical and abrasive that theatergoers probably will not want to spend much time in his presence. Still, by emphasizing the rousing score over Cohan’s up-and-down career, The Wick has an entertaining, nostalgic evening, particularly for audiences of a certain age.
For what it’s worth, George M! covers Cohan’s rise from vaudeville anonymity to Broadway fame, putting career ahead of family and, after becoming known as “the man who owns Broadway,” turning his back on the theater community over a dispute about the creation of a union for stage actors.
Joerder, who once toured in the show himself, has an impressive discovery in Scott Leiendecker, who certainly has the Cohan swagger and bravado down cold. He is a nimble dancer whose tapping is impressive and he sings serviceably well, if not for much power. Leiendecker is most of the show, even if there are 20 more people in the cast.
For a bit of star power, Joerder has enlisted Susan Powell (a/k/a Miss America 1981) to narrate the show, a task which proves fairly minimal. She does radiate charm, though, and in the second act, she joins the action by becoming turn-of-the-century songstress Faye Templeton, whom Cohan manipulates into headlining one of his shows. In the role, she gets to sing the lilting “Mary,” a number that will probably have you humming along.
Otherwise, we barely get to know Cohan’s two wives, Ethel (Amelia Millar) and Agnes (Kelly Ziegler), just as he apparently gave them little attention.
It takes time for the show to get into gear, slowed by the narration and, in the first act, by an extended montage of variety acts which demonstrate why vaudeville died. Late in the first act, Cohan makes his Broadway debut and George M! comes alive with a cutting from his Little Johnny Jones, in which Leiendecker sings the stirring “Give My Regards to Broadway.”
The scenic design isn’t much, but the stage-wide animated projections by Josieu Jean more than compensate. And as we have come to expect from the Wick, Broadway-quality costumes lend an air of authenticity and period style. George M! is not a great show, but if you can be satisfied by a thumping good score and a few solid performances, it will do for a summer’s evening’s entertainment.
GEORGE M!, The Wick Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through July 19. $55. 561-995-2333.