Dysfunctional families and palace politics, on Glen Arbor stage
Pictured here, at a recent rehearsal of Hamlet, are the palace guards reacting to the sight of a ghost—Hamlet’s murdered father. Photo by Riverside Shakespeare’s Jill Beauchamp.
By Sarah Bearup-Neal
Sun contributor
A new summer recipe for you.
Take one gloomy 16th century Dane. Fold in a mess of current events. Let bake for 120 minutes under bright stage lights. Then, out of the oven pull a new Danish hot dish: Hamlet. This local production full of 21st century tweaks is coming to a summer stage near you.
Riverside Shakespeare debuts its updated version of this family tragedy July 16 at Studio Stage in Glen Arbor. The production travels July 17-27 to five other venues in Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties as part of its annual summer tour. This is the Traverse City company’s 15th season staging Shakespeare’s plays.
The group’s mission is to “bring Shakespeare to the region and make it accessible for everyone,” said founding member Jill Beauchamp. That mission is accomplished through free performances and, in the case of this production, by reshaping a familiar story into a modern tale.
Work on the design of “Hamlet” started last winter. The Edward Snowden/NSA/domestic spying business was still lurking in the shadows of current events. Life was once more imitating art, said Mychelle Hopkins, the play’s director and Old Town Playhouse’s education director. She ran with it.
“I always try to find a way into the play that will make it accessible to modern audiences. The idea of spying; metadata; the fact the government is watching; wanting to be sure you’re not being spied on—there are so many things in this play that mirror contemporary events,” Hopkins said.
“Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s longest play and one of his best known, concerns the efforts of the titular Prince to sort through the suspicious death of his father, the king of the Danish city-state Elsinore, followed by Hamlet’s mother’s rapid remarriage to his father’s brother, Claudius. Furthermore, Hamlet, is being undermined by his girlfriend’s father, Polonius. This guy’s a world-class nosebody who hides behind the curtains to listen to other people’s private conversations. Polonius, Lord Chamberlain to the king (“He’d be secretary of state today,” said Beauchamp, who plays the role) is also a guy who keeps track of whose political star is in ascendance and whose is in decline. To paraphrase Hamlet: Man, what a piece of work is he. Some things—i.e. dysfunctional families and palace politics—never change.
The Riverside Shakespearians made a “pretty immediate” connection between the “then” of the play and the “now” of the production, said Hopkins, a Fulbright scholar with a Master’s degree in The Bard from the University of Birmingham/England. To bring that connection home to audiences, the players wear modern clothes and are propped out with an array of familiar, ubiquitous communications devices, including laptops and cell phones.
“The music playing during the scene changes is contemporary, as in the last 10 or 20 years—as opposed to Elizabethan; but it will have a techno feel to it. Lots of synthesized sound,” Hopkins said. “It gives the feeling of a sterile, computerized world.”
“We’re really happy Riverside Shakespeare approached us to do this,” said Peg McCarty, Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) director. “What a great thing for families and kids to be introduced to Shakespeare in this kind of setting.” Studio Stage, the venue for many of the GAAA’s Manitou Music Festival concerts, is part of Lake Street Studios. It’s a grassy open-air, deeply shaded knoll—a detail of import to Hopkins.
“It could be 90 degrees and what are you going to costume your players in?” she asks. “Three layers of wool and they’re playing in the blistering sun?” The unspoken “I don’t think so” enters the mind’s ear. For the Riverside Shakespearians’ re-telling of the Elizabethan sad sack’s messy life—a real recipe for disaster—it’s all things modern all the time.
The Riverside Shakespeare production of Hamlet will be staged at the following venues:
• July 17, 7 p.m., outside the Old Arts Building, 111 S. Main St., Leland.
• July 18, 7 p.m., Waterwheel Park, St. Mary’s Street, Suttons Bay.
• July 19, 6 p.m., Veterans Memorial Park, River Street, Elk Rapids.
• July 20, 6 p.m., at Haserot Park, E. Nagonaba Street, Northport.
• July 24-25, 7 p.m., Hannah Park, 6th Street and Union, Traverse City.
• July 26-27, 6 p.m. Hannah Park, 6th Street and Union, Traverse City.
