Summary 
Chicago production begins with vibrancy and promise, featuring a frail and empathetic prince consumed with grief. Bold and colorful staging, but a mechanical second act, a jarring use of onstage video and an arty conclusion leave the tragedy unrealized.
Design
Directed by Charles Newell. Lights by John Culbert. Costumes by Joyce Kim Lee. Set by Narelle Sissons. Sound by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman. Fights by Robin McFarquhar.
Cast
Guy Adkins (Hamlet), Kevin Gudahl (Ghost/Claudius), Barbara Robertson (Gertrude), John Reeger (Polonius), Tim Kane (Laertes), Cassandra Bissell (Ophelia), Lance Baker (Bernardo/Rosencrantz), Brian Hamman (Marcellus/Guildenstern).
Analysis
Director Charles Newell sets Hamlet upon a flat, metallic rectangle that rests upon the stage like a gravestone. A slanted white scrim looms like a shroud over the reflective stage surface, giving the set a cold and sterilized feel.
The production begins in complete darkness with Hamlet's agonized wails. Low stage lights rise upon Guy Adkin's naked Hamlet, curled into a fetal ball at center stage. He shivers and weeps, his shadow cast upon the curtain behind him. In rising sound and increasing light, a pulse of revelatory light strikes then fades, as Adkins' Hamlet begins to stand. Again in total darkness for 1.1, the Elsinore watch scramble upon metal catwalks that extend from the stage over the audience's heads, their flashlights probing as they call with fright to one other. The ghost of Hamlet's father, carrying a burning torch that provides the only other light, walks slowly across the stage.
These opening moments provide a stark and striking beginning for the tragedy. To contrast, Newell's 1.2 splashes the stage with garish color. Claudius, something of a middle-aged bully clad in a regal purple suit, dominates at stage center. With his new wife, Gertrude, slinking in an alarmingly low-cut emerald green dress at his side, they appear to be ready for a night of clubbing rather than presiding over business at the royal court. Facing them upstage in single file stand Polonius in a severe brown suit, Laertes in navy blue, and Ophelia in a lavender dress. At the end of the line stands Adkins' Hamlet, all in black, his head down. When he rejects his mother's assertion that he seems "peculiar" among the court - "I know not seems" - the others in line turn to gaze at him before turning again to face the new King. Hamlet himself then turns, facing away from Claudius in a silent rejection of his throne. Claudius and Gertrude complete the scene by nearly skipping offstage with excitement. The lights fade and Adkins sinks to his knees on a tiny, cock-eyed wooden stage in front of the metallic shimmer of the main set piece. Weak and weary, he shows the audience a picture of his deceased father - "Hyperion to a satyr" - is lit from underneath and appears as if a ghost himself. Adkins' Hamlet, sympathetic and likeable, seems highly intelligent but not overly contemplative, more shattered and searching than afraid or thinking too much.
An overly intellectual Polonius is presented as a serious and wise parent. His 1.3 instruction of college-bound Laertes takes place with both men seated at the edge of the stage, and when Polonius stresses the importance of individuality - "to thine own self be true" - he places his hand on Laertes' arm, and Laertes in turn puts his hand over his father's. Polonius' subsequent berating of Ophelia over her feelings for Hamlet has a darker tone, and stage fog creeps onstage and background music swells as the scene pointedly segues into 1.5 and Hamlet's confrontation with the ghost of his demanding father.
The ghost turns from Hamlet and moves away, ignoring calls of "Hamlet!" and "King!" but turning to comply at the anguished cry of "Father!" Newell emphasizes the murderous demands placed upon Hamlet as well as the domineering nature of Hamlet's father: at "o horrible" in 1.5 the ghost turns Hamlet and clutches his neck from behind, and when the watch hesitates to declare their loyalty, the command of "Swear!" from beneath the stage startles one guard into lurching forward and falling, and the other flees at first opportunity.
Newell makes wise choices in doubling his actors. Kevin Gudahl portrays brothers, the capped, torch-bearing Ghost and the purple-suited, balding intimidator Claudius. The same two actors who portray the watch, commanded into action by the specter of a murdered King, also play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, commanded into spying on their friend by the King's usurping brother. As the latter, they wear colorful shirts over black leather pants, and they mock Hamlet when they follow him off-stage, aping his melancholy with zombie-like movements.
The stage features an upstage walkway behind the white scrim. Characters can be seen lurking along the edges, observing the onstage action, or walking in silhouette behind the curtain. For example, Ophelia eavesdrops upon Hamlet's 1.3 soliloquy from the upstage walkway and can be seen pacing during Hamlet's 2.2 greeting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Newell's choices make for a compelling Hamlet, and the production excels behind the quiet power of Adkins' sympathetic title character. Adkins' 2.2 foolery with Polonius takes a suddenly seriously turn at "except ...my ...life" and he addresses the Pyrrhus speech with earnest feeling directly to the audience, then takes a modest bow later with "what an ass am I." His interaction with the stiff Polonius always includes a warm initial embrace that becomes a running joke throughout the first act. During 3.1, his tender embrace of Ophelia becomes tears at the realization she has lied to him and will instead be loyal to her father. His sadness rises into wails and he walks in rapid circles until Ophelia halts him with a desperate embrace, and moments later, Adkins is chilling with cold acceptance: "get thee to a nunnery."
Adkins' Hamlet seems consumed with sadness during the 3.2 mousetrap scene. Ophelia refuses to allow him to lay his head in her lap, but Gertrude does allow Claudius. In an odd misstep, Hamlet provides Horatio with a blank videocassette, and Horatio videotapes the play-within-a-play, with the video footage displayed upon the upstage curtain. The anachronism, sudden and jarring, distracts from the impact of the on-stage drama, with the audience drawn to the projections of extreme close-ups of Claudius and Gertrude. Horatio stands opposite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a friend on one side of Hamlet, and enemies on the other. At the pretend poisoning, Gudahl's enraged Claudius seizes a nearby spotlight ("Give me light!") and shines the light first at the Player portraying the regicide, then at Hamlet, before he storms offstage in a blackout.
The first act concludes with the 3.4 violence within Gertrude's bedroom chamber. Polonius conceals himself behind a filmy plastic curtain at stage left, and when Hamlet attacks, he rips the curtain apart with his dagger. Polonius drags a bloodied hand down the plastic before falling through the shreds to the stage, and a pool of blood swells from beneath his body, his murder the fulcrum of the story.
Newell, who severed by his own approximation thirty percent of the text, begins the second act with a re-ordered 3.1 "to be or not to be" soliloquy. Adkins sits at center stage, his hands still bloody, and at "the pale cast of thought" he wipes his hand across his face, smearing blood over himself. Hamlet, rattled to the core, ponders suicide, and to this point, Newell's production has been wisely executed with an acute understanding of the text. From here, the production falters with heavy melodramatics and ultimately disappoints.
During 4.3, Claudius nearly doubles over with guilt, and he seizes Hamlet by the hair and then chokes him. In 4.5, Gertrude sprawls on her belly in distress and refuses to speak with the declining Ophelia. Ophelia appears, not in the more usual white nightdress and manic emotions, but in black face, her hair also dyed black, and wearing a silver pantsuit with glittering sequins. She behaves with cold psychosis, matter-of-factly distributing letters in envelopes taken from Horatio instead of flowers ("fennel for you"). The sequence plays as oddity rather than tragedy.
Laertes arrives moments later, rushing through the theatre from the rear of the audience to leap onstage. Another son with a murdered father, when he comments that he would slit his father's murderer's throat in a church, an offstage wail is heard. Gertrude enters to inform them of Ophelia's drowning, but before Gertrude can exit, the Gravedigger appears downstage, drinking from a flask as he opens the trap that represents Ophelia's grave. When Laertes leaps into the grave to embrace the coffin, Hamlet one-ups him by leaping in, opening the coffin, and embracing Ophelia's lifeless body.
The 5.2 duel finale plays with sterility, an act of surgery rather vengeance, and more attributable to mental resolve than emotional need. The stage is glaringly lit, the silver reflecting brightly. The combatants wear odd lime-green jumpsuits and stand nearly toe-to-toe, with little movement or action in their "duel." Again, Horatio videotapes the contest, and again, the upstage projections detract from what takes place onstage. Once Adkins' prince falls to his back at center stage, the specter-like Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter the theatre from the rear and stand within the audience to observe the closing moments in silence.
Adkins gasps the final memorable passage, but his final line - "the rest is ..." - is not completed, the word "silence" left unspoken. The failure to complete the final passage represents both an interesting metaphor for a noble life cut off, as intended, but also a criticism of this production, which was vibrant, fresh and bold from the beginning but became odd and arty toward the conclusion, leaving the tragedy disappointingly incomplete.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.20, No.2, Spring 2002.