Although there is a troublesome, even preposterous side to the master-servant relationship of the decadent kingpins and the below-stairs Polonius family, the latter are well acted. And the class distinction brings additional piquancy to Hamlet’s mistreatment of an Ophelia who has no choice but to mind her place. Duclos’s mother hen of a Polonius is obtusely meddlesome but funnier than annoying. Consortium student Justin Blanchard, though he looks odd swilling with Claudius in his peasant’s cap and weeds, is fiery and just a little unpleasantly crafty. Rachael Warren’s Ophelia, taking orders from mom and abuse from Hamlet, is quietly heartbreaking — before she becomes harrowingly unhinged, singing fragments of vaudeville and popular song while splashing in a shift in her bath (from which she is unceremoniously hauled out by Horatio and Claudius).
McEleney says in a program note that, faced with the daunting prospect of directing “what many consider to be the greatest play ever written,” he quelled his panic by setting out to create not the definitive Hamlet but a Trinity Hamlet. That he has done, proving in the process to incoming artistic director Curt Columbus, who arrived a month ago, that despite the defection of well-regarded predecessor Oskar Eustis to New York’s Public Theatre, the venerable troupe ain’t broke and he doesn’t need to fix it.
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Theater
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