Stageloft's 'Hamlet' plays up wit, humor

To paraphrase one of the many memorable quotes in Shakespeare's most famous play, “Ferocity, thy name is Sean Gardell!” !"

Does director Ed Cornely's latest production of “Hamlet” measure up to Stageloft's 2002 brilliant staging with Glenn MacDonald in the title role? The apples-and-oranges answer to that depends on what you're looking for. The beauty of Shakespeare is the opportunity for boundless interpretation in all his work, and is there a more complicated character in theater than the melancholy Dane? Or a more challenging role to take on?

Gardell took it on in fearless full measure and then some, giving a magnificently mercurial performance Saturday night, full of quicksilver intelligence and passion.

His Hamlet is by turns tortured, vengeful, funny, angry, playful, wickedly disingenuous, sorrowful and grieving.

Wouldn't you be slightly “mad” if your father's ghost told you that your mother plotted with your uncle to murder him? Since he didn't have the luxury of a psychiatrist to guide him through all those seething, conflicting emotions, Hamlet is forced to be his own best counsel. Lucky for us, that affords us the pleasure of listening to many glorious soliloquies— all of which Gardell delivers with astounding comprehension and slashing eloquence.

It's exhilarating to watch an actor who understands the role so completely and confidently that the invisible gears in his mind and heart manifest themselves in every vocal inflection, facial expression and physical gesture. Dare it be said that one almost feels as if he's making up his performance from moment to moment?

That's how thrivingly real Gardell's Hamlet is. He's a roller coaster of emotion, a bipolar wonder. When he isn't confiding in his best friend, Horatio (solidly enacted by Kyle Maxwell), with comradely intimacy, he's rejecting Ophelia (an admirably wayward and forlorn Briana Gardell) with the searingly delivered admonition, “Get thee to a nunnery!”

In stark contrast to a sentimental recalling of happier childhood days, holding court jester Yorick's skull in his hands, he lashes out at his mother, Queen Gertrude (Melissa Earls), with furious recrimination for her betrayal. Because Earls brings an exquisitely simmering sensuality to the role, she and Gardell intriguingly play up the Oedipal undertones. There's a subtle mix of guilt and complicity in Earls' elegantly rendered performance.

Fred D'Angelo's portrayal of Claudius is fascinatingly opaque, villainy masking itself with more than the usual stealth. D'Angelo plays the part close to the vest, rarely allowing Claudius' feelings to get the best of him, as in the play-within-a-play scene that Hamlet stages to “catch the conscience of the king.” D'Angelo's Claudius is a quiet viper of a man.

Dave O'Neil and Scott Bezoenik make a cute couple as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Cornely is to be commended for recruiting George Trevlakis, another Stageloft newcomer, for the pivotal role of Laertes. Trevlakis not only has considerable stage presence, but like Gardell, he gives one the sense that he's acting in the moment — a talent put to good use in the “to thine own self be true” father-to-son speech he gets from Ron Jolicoeur, who plays Laertes' father, Polonius. Trevlakis and Jolicoeur exploit the scene for all its potential humor — the dutiful son impatiently listening to his father's advice, thinking him finished and turning to walk away, only to be pulled back for more words of wisdom as he rolls his eyes. Some things are universal, no matter the time or place.

One of the major accomplishments of this production is how Cornely and his cast emphasize the surprising level of wit and humor that runs through “Hamlet.”

Considering the steadily rising body count and prevailing tragedy, it's nice to have a healthy, commercially motivated supply of comic relief.

As an added bonus to Gardell's indelible acting, he shows off his skills in a spectacular, harrowing demonstration of swordplay with Trevlakis in the Hamlet-Laertes showdown. It's a duel choreographed with unnerving intensity. Gardell wouldn't have it any other way.