Theater these days requires so much planning to produce — the contracts, the logistics, the schedules of artists and spaces, the required advanced publicity campaigns — that there’s something rare and special about a notable, minimalist yet crystalline version of “Hamlet” just sneaking up on us.
Chicago Shakespeare’s leaders Edward Hall and Kimberly Motes saw stand-up comedian and actor Eddie Izzard’s one-person version of Shakespeare’s tragedy in New York only a month or so ago, and, with a genuine hue of resolution, wrangled it to Navy Pier before the English Izzard takes it to London. It’s coming, it’s here, it’s gone, all in a matter of weeks.
This all contrasts, of course, with the actions of the play’s hero, the famed Prince of Denmark. Even after his uncle Claudius has murdered Hamlet’s father, married his mother and taken the crown all in a speedy couple of months, Hamlet ponders the righteousness of his revenge so long that he seems carried upon the tides of others’ choices.
This version of the play is adapted for Eddie Izzard (who now goes by Suzy off-stage) by her brother Mark and directed by Selina Cadell. The adaptation and production are both quite straightforward, providing a complete, lucid telling of the tale, with Izzard playing all the characters. It takes place on an elegant set, from designer Tom Piper, of white and subtly pink walls effectively representing a castle and yet also suggesting both a prison cell and a modern spa, both appropriate for a play in which Hamlet feels both trapped and overly meditative. Izzard, looking very much like a younger Judi Dench, wears a black jacket suggesting an Elizabethan doublet but that’s also fashionable now, androgynous and sparkly.
Given Izzard’s stand-up history, it’s important to note the raw seriousness of the endeavor. Other than presenting the pathetic pawns, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as hand puppets, there are few standout moments of injected humor, no more than would expect of any production.
What is borrowed from stand-up is how Izzard depicts multiple characters on stage, quickly switching physical positions back and forth to represent multiple people conversing. Izzard has never been a mimic or vocally dexterous comic, and she doesn’t try that here. Some characters — the old Polonius with a limp, for example — get a physical difference. The two female characters — Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, whom Hamlet eventually confronts, and his would-be love Ophelia, sadly driven to suicide — are provided a subtly higher, thinner voice and a hand up near the heart. Simple choices for sure, although Izzard also sensitively invests them with a convincing vulnerability.
This is unquestionably an impressive performance, not for the depth of its depictions of individual characters but for its overall storytelling and attention to the language. This could be an ideal first “Hamlet” for a younger theatergoer, as Izzard prizes clarity above all.
Surprisingly, the best scenes from a theatrical perspective might be considered the most challenging. The opening sequence, in which Hamlet and his friend Horatio together witness the ghost of Hamlet’s recently deceased father, not only establishes the playing style but delivers, with simple flashes of light, the sense of the supernatural. And the ending scene — a swordfight with a swirl of twists — delivers both adrenaline and narrative precision without an actual weapon in sight.
There are few flashes of surprising interpretation here, although there is a nuanced attention to Hamlet’s own sense of distance from his emotions. One of the show’s most memorable moments follows Hamlet’s asking for an actor to deliver a speech, replete with oversized emotion, at a fictional death. Before launching into one of the many gorgeous soliloquies that makes this among Shakespeare’s most prized efforts, Izzard’s Hamlet, now alone, takes the spot of the actor and attempts the same gestures, trying to summon the inner drama. He can’t, which leads him to wonder at his own inaction: “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba/That he should weep for her? What would he do/Had he the motive and the cue for passion/That I have?”
It’s a passionate moment — about a lack of passion, no less — in a show that can seem a bit restrained. But what this “Hamlet” might lack in emotional power, it makes up for in intimacy. Izzard talks to the audience as a stand-up would, not living in some other world but right there, fully present, channeling the story with a type of relaxed ease she has developed over decades.
Eddie Izzard knows how to command an audience. Shakespeare sure knew how to weave complex tales. In this case, the sum does indeed add up.
