Fresh prince of Soulpepper: Schultz plumbs Hamlet's depths

hamlet
Soulpepper theatre company
the national post

Albert Schultz is an outstandingly lucid Hamlet and an outstandingly likeable one. The two things go together. Schultz, it turns out, speaks Shakespearean verse with a clarity, discipline and colour that will stand comparison with any actor in Canada short of William Hutt. His soliloquies in particular are unclouded windows into a mind that will consider any question, see it from every angle, passionately pursue each argument and still end up dissatisfied.

"To be or not to be" -- a speech that comes, strictly speaking, out of no dramatic situation except the restlessness of Hamlet's own thoughts -- leaves him bereft of any reason for not committing suicide but still with no intention of doing it; in fact, it's the prelude to some especially feverish activity. Or take the two matched speeches "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" and "How all occasions do inform against me," which sing the same tune in different keys. In both, Hamlet, with his revenge unachieved, adopts the comparative method of self-laceration, measuring his own inactivity first against the Player who's reduced himself to tears by reciting a tragic lament, and then against the Norwegian army marching to conquer a worthless patch of ground. Both actions are essentially ludicrous, and Hamlet knows it. But he ends both speeches by metaphorically slapping himself on the back and promising to emulate them; he will be a man of action, if it kills him. The irony is that the more measured of his two conclusions -- "my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth" -- leads only to the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who aren't worth it. He does kill Claudius, his real enemy, a whole act later, but that's a reflex decision when he finally finds himself hurled into the middle of the revenge tragedy that he has been circling around all evening.

The earlier, more melodramatic (and more celebrated) "the play's the thing in which I'll catch the conscience of the king" proves far more practical. He has laughed at himself for in effect playing the Player with his cry of "O vengeance," but in fact his command performance goes on as planned, Claudius unmasks himself on schedule and Hamlet feels at liberty to kill him. He then, of course, stabs the wrong man. Hamlet the play is like a giant staircase, rearing up in the darkness and with some vital rungs missing. The gaps make it only more satisfying. It's as illogical as life, and the character with the best mind in the whole of drama is at the heart of it, trying to make sense.

Schultz's Hamlet is a sensitive guy emotionally as well as intellectually. He is unusually well-disposed toward most of the people he meets, with the obvious exception of Claudius, and also of Polonius, whom he treats with a contempt untempered even by the grudging affection for the old man that most Hamlets manage to squeeze in somewhere between the lines. Welcoming the Players, he is courtesy itself, and when he rouses himself from his initial misery to greet Horatio (Oliver Dennis, anxiously supportive), his whole spirit seems to light up. This is one of many occasions on which the actor seizes the plainest implications of the text and makes them a dramatic fact. Both the gentleness and the bashful histrionics were features of Paul Gross's Stratford Hamlet -- for the same director, Joseph Ziegler -- but they make more organic sense this time around.

The reverse of his benevolence is a bitter disillusion when it's abused. Longing to believe the best of Ophelia, he turns on her, with brutal venom, when he suspects her of betraying him. When after her death he proclaims his love for her, you don't actually believe him, but you believe that he would like to believe himself. The chief outward forms of his "antic disposition" are a white flapping shirt and bare flapping feet that, given the actor's broad face and frame, make him look endearingly untidy. Real madness occasionally threatens but never materializes, which is a reasonable choice. What Schultz doesn't crack is Hamlet's vein of mordant hysteria, the dark defence reaction after he's seen the Ghost or scared the king or killed Polonius. He is fine in the healing stoicism of the last scenes and in the fun of the duel before it turns mortal. This is a Hamlet with an open face and an open mind, open to everything. The strain kills him. He dies, you might say, of young age.

There is an extracurricular pleasure just in seeing Schultz on the stage again, for the first time since Uncle Vanya three years ago, and watching him, Soulpepper's artistic director, interacting with a stageful of company regulars. No one would accuse Soulpepper of failing to promote themselves, but the one achievement they have neglected to publicize is the one that has probably won them the greatest following: their creation of a flexible recognizable ensemble. It's much in evidence here. William Webster is a dazzling Polonius, flashing up wit from every line while combining the crafty politician with the self-satisfied buffoon. His family, in this production, convinces as a group. Patricia Fagan's Ophelia may be her best performance yet, not so much for the taunting sexuality of her madness (it's very good but I've rarely seen a mad Ophelia who wasn't) but in the far harder scenes of sanity where she presents a sheltered girl crucified by her own obedience. She listens lovingly to her brother Laertes (Seann Gallagher, technically ungainly but essentially accurate) but is terrified of her father, especially when he's being solicitous.

Oliver Becker, much improved from last year, is a shabby Claudius. This makes sense. The king envies his nephew's popularity (which here is unusually plausible) and is no glamorous villain. He has committed one murder and would prefer to leave it at that; he would rather like to play the good uncle and would very much like to repent, though neither proves possible. So he reverts, with cold efficiency, to crime, at which he remains very good. His dependence on his wife remains, and is partly reciprocated. Nancy Palk's Gertrude is a small but affecting study in hopelessly divided loyalties.

The director himself plays a good Ghost and a better Gravedigger, though Claudius's recoil from the latter as if he had seen the former is best described as a nice try; the production is too full of doubling for this example of it to have registered as anything special. Denmark's a prison but in Peter Hartwell's economical set it seems to be made of Norwegian wood. Each scene is encircled by the actors who aren't in it; this encourages concentration, theirs and ours, though the idea overreaches itself when characters already dead get up and start haunting the final massacre. If this is intended to suggest encroaching doom, it's too late; it hasn't been that kind of production. Ziegler's great merits are the quality of his storytelling, the depth and texture of the relationships and the fact that the actors always know what they're talking about -- even in the opening battlements scene, which is about the people in it and not, as often, about getting the show started. Later on, R and G (Sanjay Talwar and Derek Boyes) arrive with a full subtext, as if somebody had written a whole play about them and they had read it. Schultz's Hamlet may be the observed of all observers, but he is also the observer of everyone else. He has left his mark on the character; the character, I suspect, will have done the same to him.

A lighter Shakespeare: I hated the first scenes of Theatre by the Bay's Comedy of Errors, but by the show's end I admired it very much. I shall return to it next Saturday, but as that is its last day, I advise you to see it now.