To be or not to be Hamlet (and everybody else)? Eddie Izzard answers the question in solo show

Of all the incredible prose in Shakespeare’s dramatic epoch “Hamlet,” it is perhaps the idea of “to thine own self be true” that has come to personify Eddie Izzard’s newest take on the centuries-old stage production.

Landing in a limited engagement April 19-May 4 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater after a critically hailed and thrice-extended New York run, Izzard offers an entirely solo performance of “Hamlet” in this new production. It sees the British comedian and Tony Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning talent (notable for Roundabout Theatre Company’s “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg” and David Mamet’s “Race” as well as film roles in “Across the Universe,” Ocean’s Twelve,” “Ocean’s Thirteen” and a 2023 adaptation of “Doctor Jekyll”) taking on all 23 characters in the classic work. Without a supporting cast and with few props, Izzard single-handedly relays the chaos that devolves after the King of Denmark is killed and Prince Hamlet vows revenge.

Not only has it been a massive undertaking to portray queens, kings, lovers and fools with equal conviction (doing so in a versatile costume of pleather pants, a peplum blazer and heeled boots), but playing both male and female roles also provided personal gratification for Izzard, who is gender-fluid and goes by the name Suzy, though she prefers Eddie Izzard for her stage name.

“We had to be very careful that we did honor to the female characters and the male characters. Being a gender-fluid person, it’s the one thing I really wanted to do — pay equal honor to both and make sure the [character] arcs were driven through,” Izzard explained in a recent phone call.

“I’m afraid [they] are underwritten by Shakespeare,” Izzard says of The Bard’s take on the play’s main female characters. That includes Ophelia (the mistreated love interest of Hamlet who winds up going mad) and Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother who commits the ultimate betrayal by marrying the uncle who killed his father).

“I wanted to make sure that Ophelia was the young woman in me if I had grown up a woman. I would’ve been quite happy to grow up a woman,” Izzard shared. “And then play the older woman, the Gertrude in me, who’s denying, denying, denying until Hamlet gives her such a tough time.”

Of course in Shakespeare’s heyday, women weren’t allowed to take the stage so men were cast in female roles.

“I felt a big disconnect with that. … Why couldn’t women play these roles? What, were they going to explode?” Izzard joked in her typical comedic tongue while also echoing her socio-political side, having previously run for candidacy in the British Labour Party while also engaging in a number of back-to-back charity-driven marathons over the past couple decades. She admitted, though, that the work on “Hamlet” is “tougher” physically and mentally.

Carol Rosegg

The concept for the revamped show grew out of a collaboration with Izzard’s brother, Mark, who adapted the script, and director Selina Cadell. The trio also collaborated on a similar solo theatrical presentation of Charles Dickens “Great Expectations” in New York and London’s West End, both in 2022. The brothers’ partnership originally had began much earlier, as Izzard fondly recalled, first “working” with Mark in homegrown theater productions as schoolkids.

“I sold tickets for his show at boarding school when I was 10 and he was 12. He did a drama, like a Sam Spade detective drama, and all the kids acting in it were in their pajamas,” Izzard said.

Mark Izzard would go on to pen a book in his 20s and become proficient in French, German and Spanish. Eddie is also fluent in those languages, often incorporating them into her standup, with Mark’s help. It naturally provided curiosity about Shakespeare and “Hamlet,” considering how much complex prose permeates the Bard’s wordsmithing in his suite of works. As such, the main goal with the new adaptation was making it “grabbable, accessible, understandable, while keeping the beauty of the poetry,” Izzard said.

“If Americans feel Elizabethan verse is not so easy on my ear, but are sure the British ear would be completely fine with it — no, we have as much difficulty as you do,” Izzard said, adding that, “as a dyslexic kid I found it very tricky [to understand].”

In fact, she admitted the desire to take on the work was really to conquer her own fear of it.

“I was intimidated by Shakespeare, and that was part of the reason I was drawn towards it … wanting to do great acting roles and being drawn to things if they are scary to me, and thinking, ‘Well, I should push back on that fear and see where I can get to,’” she revealed, concluding, “I wasn’t on the standard list of ‘this actor should be the next person to play him, so I gave it to myself.”