When we first see Scott Parkinson’s Hamlet, he looks exactly like a Hamlet is expected to look. Leaning against an upstage wall, dressed all in black, his backlit face obscured by moody shadows, he’s the very picture of the melancholy Dane. There’s even an homage to Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film performance suggested by the glow of his Nordic-blond hair.
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The divergence from type becomes still more obvious when Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, murdered King Hamlet. Larry Yando is all square-jawed, wire-haired fierceness in the role, as if the dead monarch’s soul had transmigrated into a German shepherd trained for combat duty. Next to him, Parkinson comes across as the mewling runt of the litter. I found myself feeling bad for the agitated old spirit, having to pin his hopes for eternal rest on such a misfit of a son.
The notion of a homo Hamlet isn’t new, but it’s definitely a minority position. Director Michael Halberstam demonstrates that it makes absolute—even revelatory—sense in his fascinating, if not entirely successful staging of Hamlet for Writers’ Theatre.
Collette Pollard’s set is another star of the show, establishing a world of stone to contain the tragedy and placing a single, brilliantly resonant non sequitur at its center: what appears to be a scorch mark on the back wall, about the size of a human being.
Through 11/11: Tue-Wed 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$70.
