DANE OF THRONES

All systems are 'go' in Hamlet, the centerpiece production of this year's Santa Cruz Shakespeare season. The acting is impressive at every level, and the action trots along with clarity, focus and feeling. Director Susan Dalian updates the famous tale of political murder, moral corruption, and generational angst into the post-assassination JFK/Mad Men era, which makes enough sense to complement, not distract from the drama.

To recap: The King of Denmark has died suddenly, and his brother, Claudius, has assumed the king's throne and married the king's wife, Queen Gertrude. The royal son, Prince Hamlet, home from school abroad for his father's funeral, is already shocked by his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle when the ghost of his father tells Hamlet he was murdered by Claudius and demands vengeance. 

Much of the play revolves around Hamlet's soul-searching, as he grapples with grief and rage: must he avenge his father's murder? What happens if he does? Can he live with himself if he does not? Is life worth living at all? Meanwhile, he pretends to be mad, spouting wordplay and foolery, hoping to throw the plotters off-guard and learn the truth about his father's death — and decide what to do about it. 

As Hamlet, incoming SCS Artistic Director Charles Pasternak makes a grand, rampaging feast of the part. Roaring in outrage, heartfelt in despair, he can shift in an instant into nimble verbal dancing and witty asides, baiting the pompous and the less intellectually adroit. It's a Herculean, often riveting  performance that never quite loses its grounding in life-sized human emotion. 

Mike Ryan plays the treacherous Claudius with glib, glad-handing duplicity. As Gertrude, Marion Adler seems hopefully pragmatic at first, trying to restore peace to her recently disrupted court, but gradually descends into aching remorse the "crazier" and more reproachful her son becomes. There's more collateral damage in Ophelia, Hamlet's paramour, daughter of the king's counselor, Polonius. Allie Pratt plays her as a fragile, innocent flower child driven genuinely out of her mind by Hamlet's pretended lunacy. 

By far the most arresting supporting character in this production in Polonius, gender-switched from a befuddled, cliche-spouting, out-of-touch doddering father, as the role is usually played, into a socially scheming mother. The remarkable Paige Lindsey White gives us an interfering mother of dynamic, aggressive cluelessness, eager to enforce the romantic and social protocols of her own bygone era, and thus prove worthy to meddle in the schemes of her royal in-laws-to-be. White's Polonius is a vividly entertaining comic figure, right up to the moment she's undone by her own hubris, daring to believe (mistakenly, as it turns out) that she's sly enough to match wits with the pros in ruthless court politics. 

Jono Eiland and Elliot Sagay are pleasantly accommodating as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (not necessarily in that order, although no one is ever quite sure), Hamlet's school friends recruited by Claudius to spy on his antagonistic step-son. Charlotte Munson is effective as Horatio, Hamlet's confidant, and the play's moral and rational center, and the ever exuberant Patty Gallagher pops up as the Player King, head of a troupe of actors hired by Hamlet to stage an incendiary drama about regicide. Raphael Nash Thompson brings his sonorous voice and formidable presence to the vengeful Ghost. 

Austin Blake Conlee's costumes run toward relaxed mens' suits and chic linen dress ensembles in popsicle pastel colors, accompanied by wigmistress Jessica Carter's extravagant mid-60s bouffants. Luke Shepherd's smart, subtle, insinuating sound design enhances the action at every turn. 

This is the fourth production of Hamlet mounted by the company since its original inception as Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 1981. The first production of the play, way back in 1985, starred a young Brit recently imported from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Paul Whitworth, in the title role. 

Incidental characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were played by Danny Scheie and Jack Zerbe, who also got to star in a concurrent production of Tom Stoppard's hilarious existential comedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which played on alternate nights with Hamlet throughout the season. 

This was momentous casting for the company, since both Scheie and then Whitworth would go on to serve tenures as Artistic Director. 

Me, I loved both productions so much, I channeled my inner Al Hirschfield and drew this cartoon, commemorating the season! 

 

Hamlet plays in repertoire through August 31st in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park.

WILD RIDE

Fasten your gauntlets for this wild ride! In The Master of Verona, actor-author David Blixt  merges the historical realities of life in the Renaissance Italian city-states with what you might call the origin stories of some of Shakespeare's most famous plays.

The plot begins when the infamous poet Dante Alighieri (long exiled, and now a caustic celebrity) joins the court of his new patron, Francesco della Scala, called Cangrande, the cunning, charismatic, ruthless, and dazzling Lord of Verona.

Over the template of Cangrande's raucous real-life exploits, Blixt sows the seeds of themes, plots, and characters that will evolve into some of Shakespeare's most famous plays, to be further developed in the next three books (and counting) in the series.

Despite teasing hints, few of Shakespeare's actual characters appear in this book, but the devilish glee with which Blixt foreshadows conflicts and stories to come keeps us turning the pages.

The story is so dense with historical action and intrigue, I meant to skim an early, detailed battle scene, but the character-building was so excellent, I didn't want to miss a word. (Also, the busy plot demands you pay attention!)

Statue of Cangrande, Verona

It may take Blixt 100 pages to describe the events of a single day, but he knows his Shakespeare, his Dante, and his Renaissance Italian history. And there's literally never a dull moment!

It's fascinating to watch protagonist Pietro Alighieri evolve from studious youth longing for the approval of his famous father, accidental war hero, and confidant of Cangrande, into a man for whom honor and justice are so ingrained, he doesn't even realize how extraordinary his values are.

Full disclosure: I started reading this book for practical (or possibly piratical) reasons. Working on my own Italian Renaissance project, I was hoping to steal, er, sample some of the period color.

Evidently, flamboyant Cangrande laughed at danger!

In a sudden fit of de-cluttering (the kind I only seem to do when I'm supposed to be writing), I found a postcard for this book and another novel with a similar historical setting in an old file of tchotchkes from a long-ago book conference.

So, I found both books online. The first one was a little too YA for me. Then I picked up this daunting volume: it weighed a ton, the pages were numerous, and the print was tiny.

Well, I thought, I'll just skim through it and hopefully pick up a little of the flavor of the era through osmosis.

Hah! Flavor? This book is a fourteen-course meal! No point standing on ceremony; better just dive in, for all the reasons mentioned above!

THANE OF THRONES

Dressed to thrill: Parret & Pickering

William Shakespeare might as well have written Macbeth for the Festival Glen at UCSC. Who can resist witches, ghosts, blood and mayhem under the towering redwoods at night, under a canopy of stars?

The new Santa Cruz Shakespeare production of the play could not be any more atmospheric. Director Kirsten Brandt's staging of the durable drama of ambition, murder, and revenge in ancient Scotland comes roaring out of the trees and down the aisles, across Nina Ball's splendid stage and the ramparts above.

Rodolfo Ortega's sweeping, Game Of Thrones-like music soars over all, while the sound and lighting designs of Ortega and Kurt Landisman keeps thunder and lightning rumbling ominously through the trees between scenes. (Although, perhaps not as ominously as the real-life lightning storm that blew over the Glen Thursday night, canceling the last preview performance.)

B. Modern's costumes are a Shakespeare fangirl's dream of kilts, tartans, leather leggings, and velvet medieval gowns worked in gold.

Wohlrabe as Banquo's ghost

The show begins with a bang: the three shrieking witches are hauled down the hill and onto the stage by soldiers, who denounce them with Biblical quotes ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!"), and lock them into horned, cage-like headdresses.

This sets up the conflict between mysterious female energy and male military power when the witches are encountered by the troops of old King Duncan (Kurt Meeker), returning from a victory at the front.

Speaking in riddles, the witches prophesy that Macbeth (Steve Pickering), Thane of Glamis, will be king, and that his comrade-in-arms and fellow thane and general, Banquo, will found a dynasty of kings. Banquo is usually a male role, but in this gender-bending season, the general is a woman.

Greta Wohlrabe looks great in the part, strutting around like Brienne of Tarth, but since Banquo functions as the conscience of the play, the moral force that Macbeth abandons for glory, it's too bad she and Macbeth don't establish a deeper camaraderie from the outset.

Melinda Parret is a bold and effective Lady Macbeth. She starts plotting the minute she hears about the prophecy, calling on the gods and spirits to harden her natural female tendency toward mercy to do away with the old king while he sleeps under her roof, so Macbeth can ascend to the throne. Her murderous plan shocks her husband, at first, but ultimately seals both their dooms.

There are two traits anyone playing Macbeth needs—fire and tragedy. But Pickering seems a little complacent in the role. He never quite musters the intensity of a good man fatally tempted to hazard all for the sake of ambition. As a result, his waffling over his part in the bloody deed doesn't have the weight of a moral crisis, of a man grappling with the destruction of his own soul. He just seems wishy-washy.

However, Toby Onwumere (above) has fire to burn as Macduff, Thane of Fife, onetime ally and ultimate adversary to Macbeth. The production jolts to life whenever he's onstage. Brian Smolin (such a hit in this season's hilarious farce, The Liar), is very funny as the cranky Porter of the castle in the play's one comic scene.

And the witches (Patty Gallagher, Suzanne Sturn, and Mary Cavett, right) are pretty fabulous, draped in rags and flotsam and moondust, their voices amped up with an eerie reverb effect that echoes through the trees.

The entity formerly known as Shakespeare Santa Cruz is playing the last four productions it will ever give in the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen this month. (The word is, the company will relocate to Delaveaga Park for the 2016 season.)

Since this production makes such excellent use of the Glen in all its wild, spooky glory, it serves as a fitting way for fans to bid a fond adieu to this marvelous performance space.