The Cast of The Unrehearsed Hamlet at Shakespeare By the Sea
It was another wild night at Shakespeare By the Sea Sunday evening for their Unrehearsed Hamlet Season Closer. A record 1,015 people gathered at the Cambridge Battery in Point Pleasant Park to see what the company of actors had in store for them, and for Hamlet, this year. They also all braved unideal weather forecasts, although the rain mostly held off- with just a few bouts of misting and sprinkles, which added to the ambiance of the Dane’s somber tale.
The conceit of the Unrehearsed Shakespeare is that, in the style of the theatre companies in Shakespeare’s own time, the actors are only given their own lines and the line immediately preceding theirs to rehearse with on their own. Unlike in Shakespeare’s time the actors here are free to come up with their own creative concept for the character (and, thus, really, for their part of the play), and they supply their own costumes, props, and sound cues. This, as you can imagine, leads to many instances of actors playing characters from the pop cultural zeitgeist playing Shakespeare’s characters, which was certainly the case here for Hamlet.
Although there were only two muppets in the show, Kermit the Frog as Polonius and Oscar the Grouch as the Gravedigger, both played by the amazing Burgandy Code, Drew Douris-O’Hara’s portrayal of Hamlet did remind me a lot of Michael Caine’s performance of Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), in that despite a litany of muppet-level chaos going on around him he attempted to ground his performance in the reality of Hamlet’s humanity. There was a trick involved, however, for each of Hamlet’s long soliloquies an audience member pulled a piece of paper out of a hat that either read “speech” or “song,” and if “song” was drawn (as it was most of the time) Douris-O’Hara replaced the soliloquy with a karaoke rendition of an emo song like Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid” or Radiohead’s “Creep,” which worked very well. Yet, in this Douris-O’Hara’s still grounded Hamlet as much as he could in the journey of a young man grieving his father’s death and reeling over his mother’s new relationship (and with his uncle no less). …I’m not sure Douris-O’Hara had accidentally murdering Kermit the Frog on his bingo card though.
Chris George played Gertrude, Hamlet’s very Scottish mammy, who quoted to him from Robert Munsch’s bestselling book Love You Forever (via a voice over of a child reciting the book), and went so far as to pick Douris-O’Hara’s Hamlet up (twice), and cradle him in her arms. “As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be,” after all. Matt Lacas played Hamlet’s father, the Ghost of the King, who appeared to Hamlet’s friends first (to the theme song from Ghostbusters (1984)), and to Hamlet twice, as is in the script, but Lacas continued to pop up throughout the play to cheer on his son’s revenge plans.
Hamlet’s best friend Horatio was played as Woody from Toy Story (1995) by Dylan Brentwood in an absolutely perfect costume, which included Hamlet’s name being written on the bottom of his cowboy boot. The physicality of the way that Brentwood walked, and the fact that the play was peppered with moments where Woody’s pull string would cause him to add something like, “reach for the sky” to the script at random added a lot of comedy to Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy. Hamlet’s less loyal friends Rosencrantz (Siya Ajay) and Guildenstern (Seb Reade) were played as a fun array of well known duos including Thing 1 and Thing 2 and Elphaba and Glinda, when their costume synchronicity suddenly went delightfully awry. There were even some thrown in references to Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, who of course played these roles in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at Neptune Theatre, which Drew Douris-O’Hara was also in.
Rosie Callaghan’s choice to play Ophelia as Taylor Swift worked really well, as the more melancholy she became and the more dire the circumstances the more she immersed herself in her music, which feels like an appropriate way to really bring the character into the contemporary era. It’s also a bit of a fun nod to Swift’s own dating history. My favourite was the first time that Hamlet tells her to ‘get thee to a nunnery’ and Callaghan yells with the ire of 500 years worth of feminists, “WHAT?,” with a ferocity that I think took both Hamlet and Douris-O’Hara aback. It was neat to see her really reclaiming her power in that moment. Jade Douris-O’Hara plays Laertes training for some kind of marathon or similar type of endurance event, and that placed everything going on around him as secondary to his own fitness goals, which is hilarious.
Burgandy Code’s puppeteering of Kermit the Frog as Polonius was really excellent. The way that Kermit would respond to the events occurring around him with his mouth open in Kermit’s signature shocked expression gave the audience a way to experience the play through naive and fresh eyes, as there is much in the play that Kermit, of course, finds appalling, but it works for Polonius to feel this way too- like he is the only rational person of the bunch. There were times when Kermit broke character and laughed or referenced Code, which was also a lot of fun. The moments that I felt were the most incredible were when Kermit’s Polonius was being confronted aggressively by Hamlet, and Code did such a beautiful job of capturing the iconic way that Kermit shivers with his fingers in his mouth when he is afraid. I don’t know how anyone in the audience could not be filled with empathy for Polonius when he is being played this way.
Code played the Gravedigger as Oscar the Grouch, which also worked hilariously well given that Shakespeare’s character does share Oscar’s uncongenial personality as he peppers Hamlet with riddles, and then presents him with the skull of the court jester that he used to know, in this production it was the horrifying skull of Big Bird. It also, of course, makes sense that someone who enjoys living in trash might enjoy working amid graves. Code, accompanied by Ryan Rogerson, led the crowd in a rendition of “Rainbow Connection,” Oscar’s ode to the dearly departed Kermit.
The most meta-theatrical moment came from Liliona Quarmyne playing The First Player as Jade Douris-O’Hara, and treating us to a dance piece inspired by Douris-O’Hara’s choreography. There was also a highly anticipated cameo in the sword fight (water fight) scene- Rachel Lloyd returned as Sven after her star turn both in the family show and in Unrehearsed Romeo & Juliet last summer.
The star of the show this year was Patrick Jeffrey who played King Claudius as both Austin Powers and Dr. Evil, complete with the famed score from the film as entrance and exit music. What made this performance so incredible was that Jeffrey not only had excellent costumes and props (Dr. Evil’s cat), but he was especially able to do Mike Myers’ Austin Powers voice uncannily, which, of course, gave Claudius a zany lothario quality as he chased Gertrude around telling her “oh, behave.” He also tacked “groovy” and “baby” onto just enough of his lines to really immerse us in the Austin Powers world. When he emerged later in the play as having been Dr. Evil all along, it works so well in the way that Shakespeare writes Claudius as being duplicitous, and really gives us a villain of the first order for the end of the action. I wish that I could tell Mike Myers that this happened at Point Pleasant Park in Halifax last night because I really think that he would get a kick out of it and be deeply flattered by his inclusion into this story.
Through it all Shakespeare’s words and his story do shine through, and there is something about introducing all these other characters into the world of Elsinore that still manages to shine a light on aspects of Shakespeare’s characters that are new, interesting, contradictory, complex, and human, and how they continue to offer relevance to our own world.
It’s a testament to what a unique and magical idea the Unrehearsed Shows are that over a thousand people showed up to see what was in store this year- even amid the back to school rush and colder and rainier weather- Congratulations on a great season, Shakespeare By the Sea!
The teenagers from Shakespeare By the Sea’s Studio are doing Unrehearsed A Midsummer Night’s Dream on September 5th at 7:00pm at the Cambridge Battery. Tickets are just $15.00 for Sweet Seats or PWYC if you bring your own chair or rent one for $5. Tickets are available here. You can also find more information about all the classes offered through The Studio at Shakespeare By the Sea. Next up after that is the Secret Unrehearsed Show on January 13th. Click here for more information about that.
For more information about Accessibility and the logistics of theatre in the park please visit Shakespeare By the Sea’s Frequently Asked Questions Page.
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