The Tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare Theatre Company

There are so many things that Suzy Eddie Izzard understands deeply about Hamlet. She uses the title The Tragedy of Hamlet because, as she explains in a brief speech to the audience each night, her career has been founded on comedy and there are no doubt many people who come to her Hamlet looking for a send up; that is not what this is, and the title helps to set audience expectations anew each night. She also understands, of course, that there are heaps of jokes in Hamlet, and to deny their place in an production is to lose half the reason that the story has stayed so paramount in our dramatic tradition (just this week, an informal poll run by the Folger Shakespeare Library chose Hamlet as the winner in a bracket of most popular Shakespeare plays, beating out the comedy Much Ado About Nothing). Audiences want the humor and the pathos, the one invigorating the other, and a performer who has been on stages and screens for as long as Izzard has understands this well. There are two threads in this production, adapted by Mark Izzard and directed by Selina Cadell, that distill the best of this solo performance.

Photo of Eddie Izzard in The Tragedy of Hamlet, directed by Selina Cadell. Photo by Amanda Searle

The first are the moments of soliloquy, where in each instance, Izzard heads to downstage center and delivers them with profound feeling and pristine understanding of each shifting moment. For those who didn't realize until this production how good an actor Izzard is, well, joke's on you. She's got the skills with classical texts that all to many big name actors fail to capture on stage, and she's doing it with role after role within this sweeping story.

The second is a simple running gag, expertly deployed. The interchangeable nature of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is one of Shakespeare's own jokes, as characters fail to remember which of Hamlet's university friends is which, and when there is only one actor on stage, a certain anticipation starts building early for how exactly Izzard will handle these particular scenes. I don't want to spoil her choice for you, but I will say that it's perfectly executed each time it occurs and that it's carried off with real specificity that looks deceptively simple from the outside.

Taking the whole of Hamlet and making it achievable for a single actor and understandable for the audience is a tricky highwire act to pull off, and there are some elements that work better than others. The particular adaptation here by Izzard's brother is clever but overlong, and could have been pared down further; we understand the mammoth task at hand, we shouldn't necessarily feel it in our own bones as well. Izzard's beautiful performances of the soliloquies contrast at times with the dialogue sequences on stage; she has built a comic career on casual dialogue in her shows, shifting her bode from side to side to demonstrate conversation, and her ease with that mode of performance is clear. In this particular space, however, it also lends itself to a certain detachment in her performance as the emotions should be building to dizzying heights. Shifting back and forth so casually means that's she's not pausing to let herself really live in those moments of confrontation, and the production suffers a bit as a result. 

I have been watching Izzard command stages for more than twenty years of my own life, and I think she's a performer with a voracious intellect, a need to challenge herself continually as an artist, and has found what could be a perfect vehicle in Hamlet. I wish this production had utilized her prodigious, singular gifts just a little bit better. There are moments of such wonderful clarity in this Hamlet that when the waters get a little muddled, we paradoxically see them more clearly. As always, I can't wait to see what she does next.