Hamlet . . . The rest is silence (review)

There was something I didn't understand. At the finale, after fulfilling his promise and killing Claudius, rather than dying on-stage, Hamlet stumbles up-stage and out of the fading light. As the darkness approaches completion, Hamlet charges back into view and hurls an empty hand at a frame falling fast from above. The frame is spattered with what appears to be a bit of blood and guts, some "coagulate gore." And then the rest really is silence.

What was the frame? And what precisely did Hamlet throw at it?

I don't know. I really don't care.

I also don't care that Synetic tampered with some crucial plot points, including amplifying Ophelia's pursuit of Hamlet, inserting a sequence in which Claudius learns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, and giving Hamlet and Claudius a brief but bold exchange of blows before nephew-son dispatches uncle-father.

I certainly don't care that Synetic happens to have cut more text than most producing companies—all of the text, in fact. In their talkback, the creators mentioned the controversy they caused on announcing their intentions to perform Hamlet sans even a single syllable. I understand the concern, but I rather pity the purist protesters. I find the quiet quite refreshing. I think I sometimes tend to focus on the poetic rather than the dramatic elements, preferring to concentrate on the marvelous words and maybe losing some of the power of the stories they tell. It's pleasing to be reminded, in the absence of the language, of the throbbing narrative pulse of one of Shakespeare's best stories.

And then again, maybe the language isn't actually absent after all. It's just diffused from the voice throughout the entire corporeal instrument, suffusing the space with visual instead of verbal metaphor—see the skull the Prince cradles in the crook between shoulder and jowl, his vulnerable stance screaming for the wounded and uncertain psyche; it infuses the performance with a rhythm more felt than heard or cognitively grasped—sense the shifts from dark pathos to darker comedy as Hamlet twitches his head antagonistically in Polonius's agitating presence.

What a piece of work is this. The levels, the lights, the colors, the qualities, the moods, the mirrors, the speeds, the symbolisms, the styles. It is all a genuinely dynamic synthesis of simple yet profoundly evocative design and dance. A dozen bodies and as many properties. No set but smoke and spotlight, and no sound but breath, the friction of feet on the stage-floor, and the genuinely haunting musical score. Hamlet is often praised, even worshipped, for the Prince's almost inhuman intellect, but here was the emotional core of the tragedy, stripped bare of poetic brilliance and left beating, beaten, angry, hurt. A man who cannot make up his mind, yes, but also a man who cannot make up his heart, whose tormented feelings don't have to wrestle with iambic pentameter, but find expressive release in the flutter of fingers, the twisting of wrists, the bend of the neck, the explosion of motion and of silence.