h7 A Hamlet Study (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

h7 A Hamlet Study is not in fact the play by Shakespeare.  Rather writer/performer Shayne Eastin directed by Mason Ross have fashioned a fascinating piece of performance art based on the famous play.  In other words, what we see on stage is something like stream of consciousness acted out, an odyssey of the imagination weaving in and out of the ideas, characters, scenes and lines of Shakespeare's most famous play.

In (still) other words, this makes a fine example of what I call Theatre of Dreams.  We are not watching a story per se, but a dream produced on stage.  In this case, a dream about Hamlet, perhaps a dream by Hamlet about Hamlet, or an actor playing Hamlet, or contemplating playing the role--or maybe, just maybe, Hamlet dreaming about being an actor playing Hamlet on stage.

Maybe.

The end result shifts our perceptions about the character over and over.  We see a young man/person/woman going through a routine that grinds but fills the day, feebly struggling in school against the tedium, longing for more, then their world undergoes a blow upon learning of their father's (Steve Eastin) death.  Said father later appears as a ghost, off an on.

At the same time, this version of Hamlet tries to make sense of an obviously failed relationship with a lovely young man named Ophelia (Benjamin Scott Berg).  Who also appears, maybe as a ghost (maybe not) off and on.  

Which makes for an emotional/metaphysical roller coaster I enjoyed very much.  Not least because it is funny!  And the more you know the actual play Hamlet, the funnier it is!  Because the struggles, no matter how sincere, of a spoiled princeling trying to figure out who they are amidst having a ton of disturbing responsibility thrown at them are indeed funny.  How could they not be?  What in fact is humor save a way to avoid crying?  

So we get the tragedy of Hamlet as a long, surreal joke that is only sometimes funny, but feels very real for being not at all literal.  How very theatrical.  How very mind-bending.  How very...well, Shakespearean in some ways.

h7: A Hamlet Study plays Saturdays at 7pm and Sundays at 3pm thorugh May 1, 2022 (but not Western Easter) at the Shakespeare Center LA, 1238 w. 1st St. Los Angeles 90026.  Audience members must show proof of vaccination and wear masks for the one hour show.