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Tickets $25.50 to $39.50. Call 687-1644.
The Stanley Theatre finally plays host to a production worthy of its elegant surroundings, as the veteran team of director Morris Panych and designer Ken MacDonald hand us a Hamlet of great style and almost infinite wit.
More often it's Marsha Sibthorpe's subtle use of lighting that paints those canvases in moods of cool blue or bloody red, helping define the battlements or ballrooms of Elsinore Castle. Panels and pillars descend from the rafters to delineate some spaces, but most of the play's staging is simply blocked out by a string of black benches quietly shifted between scenes.
Panych doesn't place the tale in any specific period. The opening scene is lit by torches -- if you mean the British word for flashlights -- and Bryant's attractive set of grey or black tunics for the men appear to come from a little later in the 19th century than the bustle on Queen Gertrude.
In and over and through this timeless landscape capers a Hamlet who at first seems suitably lost in moody melancholy.
Panych wisely allows actors to speak in their own voice, with only British-born Bernard Cuffling offering a rich English accent in his nicely nuanced performance of the wily and wordy Polonius. But it's obvious the director has also placed great store in ensuring everyone enunciates clearly.
Enough of the text is axed to bring this Hamlet in at under three hours (Kenneth Branagh's movie, containing every blessed line of text, clocks in at close to four).
Although purists may miss such treats as Hamlet's third-act "speak the speech" instructions to a troupe of actors and Panych has fiddled with the way the play ends, the director has effectively found the kind of pushy pace needed for what is, as local wag Bill Richardson once observed, "a play in which almost nothing happens and nearly everyone dies."
Cuffling is joined by Dion Johnstone (as Hamlet's pal Horatio) and Kurt Max Runte (as potential brother-in-law Laertes) in successfully projecting the varied states of these complex characters. As the poor, doomed pair of prats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ted Cole and Zachary Ansley are likewise a treat to watch, and Donald Adams makes both the Player King and the gravedigger his own with winning comedic turns.
Patti Allan's performance as Hamlet's much-suffering mother Gertrude could use a tweak toward more emotion, while Jennifer Clement as Ophelia must step back from caricature, especially when Hamlet's girlfriend has lost it completely and wanders the stage as a hey-nonny loon.
More problematic is Gerry Mackay's performance as Claudius, the scheming uncle who poisons Hamlet's dad and marries the poor lad's now- widowed mom. Mackay could easily crank up the malice, spit out his lines and take on Shanks in verbal fireworks. Blocking problems also work against Mackay, diminishing a powerful moment when Claudius reacts to the play-within-a-play indictment of his crime.
Although it's divided so that the first act is almost two hours long, everything proceeds at a merry clip.
On a final note, composer Jeff Corness, who worked with Panych back in 1986 on Tamahnous Theatre's Haunted House Hamlet, collaborates with violinist Mark Ferris to present a suitably eerie soundscape. From the stage-left "juliet" balcony, Ferris fiddles as Hamlet burns, Elsinore crumbles and we delight in some solid Shakespeare.
