Yet Hamlet is not an easy work. It is by no means straightforward. And while it features some obviously crowd pleasing elements—it begins with a ghost sighting and basically ends with a climactic and bloody duel—the plot between proceeds in a frustratingly listless manner, often relying on long passages of monologue addressed at no one in particular, and sometimes only loosely connected to the story one would assume it is meant to move forward. Of course, these monologues are largely made up of diamond sharp phrases, which have so thoroughly penetrated the culture that anyone with even a working knowledge of English should be constantly struck by a feeling of déjà vu.

That’s the paradox of Hamlet. The characteristics most valued in modern storytelling, like realistic characterizations and relentless forward plot momentum, are where Hamlet is weakest. Likewise, the play’s chief strengths come packaged in a form, the monologue, which is today viewed largely as a clichéd and cheap dramatic trick—the stage equivalent of a movie’s voiceover narration.

BTE’s recent adaptation of Hamlet, under the direction of Ensemble member Gerard Stropnicky, employs some interesting, if not ultimately entirely successful, attempts at bridging the gap between the play’s chief assets and a modern audience’s storytelling expectations. In the BTE telling, Hamlet is less a tragedy than an action/comedy. Forget The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; a more appropriate title for this version might be Lethal Weapon: Procrastination Kills.

The plot, briefly, is as follows (and this is a spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t found the time in the past 300 years to find out how Hamlet ends): The place is Denmark, and recently the reigning monarch, Old Hamlet, has died. His brother, Claudius (played by James Goode), marries the widowed Queen Gertrude (Elizabeth Dowd), which doesn’t sit well with her son, Prince Hamlet (Andrew Hubatsek), who grieves deeply for his dead father. The ghost of the dead king visits Hamlet, reveals that Claudius murdered him and tasks Hamlet with avenging his death. Hamlet, for reasons clear only to advanced Shakespearean scholars, decides to feign madness and investigate further. The royal family becomes concerned by Hamlet’s erratic behavior, and tries to discover the cause of it—initially suspecting it’s lovesickness over Ophelia (Cassandra Pisieczko), the daughter of royal advisor Polonius (Daniel Roth). Eventually Hamlet resolves to kill Claudius, but ends up murdering Polonius by accident, after which Claudius has Hamlet banished to England, and secretly conspires to have the English kill him. Polonius’ death leads his son, Laertes (Richard Cannaday), to attempt to overthrow Claudius in revenge, but Laertes partners with him when Claudius explains that it was Hamlet who killed Polonius. Polonius’ death also leads to his daughter Ophelia going mad and drowning. Hamlet escapes the ship bound for England and returns in time for Ophelia’s funeral, where he and Laertes argue. Laertes and Hamlet agree to a duel, during which Claudius and Laertes plan to kill Hamlet by means of a poisoned sword if Hamlet loses, and a poisoned victory drink if he wins. Of course, things don’t go as planned. Gertrude drinks the poisoned drink, both Hamlet and Laertes are stabbed with the poisoned sword, and before dying himself, Hamlet forces Claudius to drink poison, thus (finally) enacting his revenge.

Richard Cannaday as Laertes and Andrew Hubatsek as Hamlet

The BTE do a great job of communicating all the action in a straightforward and never less than understandable way. As anyone who zoned out to the accompaniment of Julius Caesar or Romeo and Juliet in high school can tell you, this is no small accomplishment. Most productions of Hamlet follow the Laurence Olivier model of really wallowing in the monologues, getting caught up in the beauty of the language in a way that glosses over and can even confuse the physical action of the play. The BTE production on the other hand, goes in the opposite direction. The famous “to be or not to be” monologue is delivered so quickly and low-key that it’s almost easy to miss. Conversely, the “get thee to a nunnery” scene between Hamlet and Ophelia is attacked with gusto by this cast. It’s an action scene in this telling, with the two characters physically retreating and converging with each other on the set in time to the emotions expressed in the dialogue. A scene like Laertes’ storming of the castle plays like a blockbuster movie action set piece. Richard Cannaday as Laertes’ bellows like Gerard Butler in the film “300,” while choreographed sword fights go on in the background. It’s all well-staged, powerful stuff, but it often only exposes the weaknesses inherent in the plot. Why does Hamlet wait so long to act? You don’t get much of an explanation in this reading, which emphasizes the many times he vows revenge and glosses over many of his doubts. Why does Laertes forgive Hamlet in the end? When the beloved “psychological depth” of the play is deemphasized, jarring plot devices like that are much more glaring.

Aaron Roberge as Horatio and Andrew Hubatsek as Hamlet

As Hamlet, ensemble member Andrew Hubatsek initially seems an odd choice. In the early scenes he seems to be channeling James Dean, playing Hamlet as a leather-jacket-wearing surly youth. The problem is that in the context, playing off the eminently charming Elizabeth Dowd and James Goode (as Gertrude and Claudius) he comes off as petulant rather than noble in his suffering. Hubatsek’s Hamlet doesn’t really come into focus until he’s called upon to feign madness. When he sidles up to Polonius, calls him a fishmonger, and proceeds to deliver a series of ratatat one-liners, it’s clear this Hamlet is occupying a space somewhere between Groucho Marx and Daffy Duck. It’s an interesting and vastly entertaining choice, one Hubatsek clearly relishes—nobody in the ensemble does Looney Tunes styled comic mayhem like him (I, for one, would love to see a BTE adaptation of a Jerry Lewis picture with him in the lead), but it exposes some of the more problematic aspects of the play. I may be 300 years too late by harping on this, but Hamlet’s plan to feign madness has always struck me as a contender for the worst plan in dramatic history. What exactly is he trying to accomplish by pretending to be crazy? All it seems to do is alienate Hamlet from any characters that could possibly help him, and it puts him no closer to revenging his father’s death. But in this portrayal at least, it provides a great number of laughs, and perhaps that’s enough.

One definite effect the comic Hamlet has is to undercut the tragic aspects of the character. Nobody feels bad for Groucho Marx, and likewise it’s hard to work up a lot of feeling for this Hamlet. The real tragedy of the play is what happens to Polonius and his children, Ophelia and Laertes. All three characters are not involved in either Claudius’ initial murder of the king, or Hamlet’s subsequent plot for revenge, yet all three end the play dead. Ironically, Polonius, the wise court advisor, misinterprets just about every event of the play leading up to his untimely demise. He’s living in a romantic comedy where he’s the bumbling matchmaker marrying his daughter up the social ladder up until the moment Hamlet stabs him to death. His whole family is caught up in machinations that they do not comprehend and have no control over, and that’s truly tragic.

James Goode, as Claudius, gives a world class Shakespearean performance, and for this audience member at least, steals the play. His character isn’t given the number of show-stopping monologues that some others get, really he only has one—the prayer scene, but the way he delivers it threatens to upset the audience’s balance of sympathies. His Claudius seems wholly motivated by his love for Gertrude. He’s a man fully aware of how wrong his actions are, but driven by his passions to follow them through nonetheless.

Daniel Roth as Polonius, James Goode as Claudius, Elizabeth Dowd as Gertrude

On the downside, Cassandra Pisieczko plays Ophelia like she’s an abused woman, constantly trembling and on the verge of tears. As her situation worsens, she doesn’t leave much room to take her emotions higher, and consequently seems flat as the play goes on. The only truly wrong note I felt the play struck came in her first scene with Polonius. As Polonius discourages her from pursuing Hamlet, he grabs her arm, twists it, and sort of pushes her to the floor, where, cowering, she delivers a few more lines. This scene is played in other productions, as in Laurence Olivier’s 1948 adaptation, almost for laughs—Polonius is at most a busybody overbearing parent, there’s no arm twisting or any other violence, implied or otherwise. That the BTE chose to portray Polonius and Ophelia’s relationship like this is a curious choice. It seems to strike notes of misogyny echoed elsewhere in the play, in particular the mirroring scenes of sexual panic between first Ophelia and Hamlet, and later between Gertrude and Hamlet. That Hamlet is terrified and repulsed by the idea of women’s sexuality is certainly a valid reading of the text, as any number of post-Freud productions have shown, but playing these scenes as strongly as BTE does is a strange choice for a play that spends so much time establishing Hamlet as a kind of wise-cracking comic figure. At the least, it does nothing to make the audience sympathize with Hamlet, and makes James Goode’s Claudius appear that much more attractive.

But this is getting academic! That BTE’s production of Hamlet can inspire its audience to so deeply consider the characters motivation is accomplishment enough for a play that dates from the end of the 17^th century being performed in Bloomsburg, PA in 2010. There is a lot of great acting on display (and I haven’t even mentioned BU Student actor, Eddie Buck, and his delightful pantomime), aided in no small way by Bruce Candlish’s superb and moody lighting design, and a minimal but highly effective set by Ethan Krupp. This is a Hamlet that is accessible for almost any audience I can think of. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll thrill at the action, and that’s more than you can say for most 300 year old entertainments.

Nick McGaw lives and works in Bloomsburg.  He is a graduate of Alfred University and the co-owner of Endless Records.

Cassandra Pisieczko

On paper, the premise doesn’t sound like it could amount to much. Frank Capra’s perennial holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” done as a faux live radio broadcast? In the hands of an unambitious group it could easily indicate a way to cut some theatrical corners and stage a show with little or no concern for the usually expensive arts of costume and set design. Luckily, the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble is not an unambitious group. Their production of  Merry Christmas, George Bailey!, adapted and directed by ensemble member James Goode, is a welcome holiday surprise. A nearly seamless and unexpectedly detailed production that successfully subverts formal theatrical conventions to a greater degree than this reviewer has ever seen from the BTE, the play is a largely successful experiment in placing a familiar story in a fresh context. It is a play so good that it is almost frustrating when a few relatively minor problems keep it from achieving total greatness.

From the moment the audience steps into the Alvina Krause Theater they are immersed in the world of the play, Bloomsburg circa 1947, the studios of local radio station WBTE. The stage is dressed in period specific detail, and everything from the glass windowed engineer’s booth to the tubular metal chairs rings with authenticity. When called upon to create a period atmosphere, it certainly helps to have an authentic art deco theater at your disposal, as the BTE has in the Alvina Krause.

Wherever possible the ensemble incorporates the actual technical aspects of running the show into the show itself. The standard introductory talk, where the audience is asked to refrain from photography among other things, is given in character by the radio station host, played by Gerard Stropnicky. The production stage manager and stagehands, usually figures that do their best to recede into the background as they go about their jobs, are placed in costume and add immeasurably to the ambience. The period illusion is entirely immersive, and there is nothing to remove the audience from it until they step back out to the street after the show ends.

Gerard Stropnicky

The script is peppered with references to a vanished Bloomsburg, and the ensemble uses commercial breaks as an excuse for some very funny jingles. This is the aspect in which the play really shines. From a storytelling standpoint, these allusions and diversions are entirely unnecessary, but they texture the material in an extraordinary way. The appeal of the “It’s a Wonderful Life” story rests largely in its appeal to the audience’s sense of nostalgia. Tellingly, the movie version was unsuccessful in its own time before finding a universal audience decades later. By tying the story to our own local sense of community lost and transformed, the inherent bittersweet qualities of the material are thoroughly unlocked. The performance within a performance framing material lets the audience step back from a story nearly everyone thinks they know inside out and view it with fresh eyes. It was a brave choice on the ensemble’s part, not quite Brechtian, but not that far off.

Among the cast, introduced under their own names but wearing period costume, a few performers really stand out. Stropnicky is great as the host and various small roles in the radio play. A moment late in the play where he carries on a dialogue while playing both characters especially captures the madcap excitement of Radio Theater at its best. Cassandra Pisieczko possesses a perfect voice as the sponsor’s spokeswoman—rich and just this side of syrupy, she nearly sounds as if her voice box were an old-time bakelite AM radio receiver. And BTE intern Jackie Macri is entirely winning as Mary Hatch, the love interest. Given a musical number, a tricky business that has felled many otherwise adequate performers throughout stage history, she glides through effortlessly.

Jackie Macri

There are some casting problems, however. The actors in the George Bailey and Clarence Oddbody roles, Kiernan McGowan and Richard Cannaday, respectively, would frankly be better off with their parts switched.

McGowan, BTE’s male intern for the season, brings an agreeable if naive enthusiasm to the George Bailey role, which works for the early scenes where his character is still an adolescent, and reasonably well for the manic and triumphant ending. But he sometimes seems lost in the dramatic scenes that make up the bulk of the play. Some sympathy should be extended—as a young actor it must be quite a daunting task to try and fill the shoes of James Stewart in his prime, one of the greatest screen actors this nation ever produced. For all the talk about Stewart being a kind of boy-next-door presence, a lot of the George Bailey role consists of expressing an intense frustration. George is a character who consistently does the right thing in spite of his own desires. He sublimates his self-interest for the interest of the community time and again, but he is far from happy about it. Stewart’s genius was his ability to portray this downright cranky and cantankerous individual without losing the audience’s sympathy. It’s a delicate balancing act between edginess and likeability and McGowan errs on the likeability side too often.

As he demonstrated in last season’s production of Leading Ladies and The Playboy of the Western World earlier this season, Richard Cannaday is perhaps the ensemble member best suited to such a sweet and sour role. He shines when given the opportunity to play a complex part, and seems to specialize in deeply flawed but likable leads. But here he’s given the more simple supporting role of the angel Clarence and seems almost bored with it. Unhappily, he succumbs to that last temptation of bored actors, the accent. His Clarence sounds distractingly similar to Gomer Pyle. What Clarence needs is not Southern pastiche, but something closer to the straightforward enthusiasm that is McGowan’s natural strength.

Richard Cannaday and Kiernan McGowan

It’s easy to understand how these parts got miscast, Cannaday did just play the lead in the last production and I’m sure the BTE justifiably wanted to feature different cast members in this one.

The sound design is great, especially the decision to feature a live pianist for incidental music, but I for one wish there were more of it. One of the hallmarks of a great radio performance is its use of layered sound, like Orson Welles employed in his Mercury Theatre of the Air productions in the late 1930s, and Merry Christmas, George Bailey! doesn’t quite achieve those heights.

But really these are small complaints. With this production, the BTE have achieved the rare accomplishment of making familiar material seem fresh and vital. This is material that just plain works, and the ensemble’s audacious staging go a long way to reinforcing that impact. The play is heartwarming, fun and funny, and a perfect way to capture the holiday spirit this year.

Nick McGaw lives and works in Bloomsburg.  He is a graduate of Alfred University and the co-owner of Endless Records.

In his work you’d expect him to be concerned with high society, like an Irish Noel Coward perhaps, but you’d be wrong. Synge was, in fact, an example of the artist as anthropologist. After some early and thankfully abortive attempts at poetry (I’ve heard his verse was baroque beyond repair) the young Synge was casting about for a focus for his creative energies, and on a tip he traveled to the Aran Islands—a group of islands off the western coast of Ireland inhabited largely by poor, traditional Irish farming communities. There he found the setting, people and language that would occupy his writing for the rest of his life.

It’s easy to dismiss Synge’s research as a kind of presumptuous slumming, but the evidence shows he didn’t indulge himself in salt-of-the-earth type platitudes or any of the other tone-deaf dreck that usually results from the highly educated taking an interest in the highly uneducated. And what evidence it is! Six plays make up the whole of his theatrical work, each one as sharp and multi-surfaced as a finely cut stone, and out of all of them, The Playboy of the Western World is without doubt the centerpiece—and, according to some critics, the finest Irish play ever written.

Strangely for a play so highly regarded now, The Playboy of the Western World was met with honest to goodness rioting upon its debut in 1907, and was protested wherever it was staged for years afterward. Like any pivotal work, it’s hard to see the fuss in hindsight, but that’s because it’s so easy for modern viewers to overlook Synge’s formal innovations. Generations of slang have deadened our ears to it, but at the turn of the century a play written in the language that common people actually spoke was truly revolutionary. What Synge did in his plays was to write in the Irish equivalent of ebonics. It was a gutsy move, and with his masterpiece, Playboy, he perfected a way of making the language sparkle, putting the wit and depth of Shakespeare into lines that sounded comfortable coming out of a potato farmer’s mouth. It’s a delicate balancing act and it is only the depth of the characterizations that keep it from collapsing into caricature. Of course the shock at hearing such common language articulated from the stage kept some of the initial audiences from seeing that depth—what they saw instead was a slur on Irish citizens and the Irish national character in general, hence the rioting.

Greeted with misunderstanding at its debut, is it any wonder that The Playboy of the Western World had a rocky initial reception here in Bloomsburg? Thankfully, this time around the Irish national character seems secure–what concerned the local newspaper about the BTE’s production was the accents the actors employed. Well I can’t speak for what any reporter saw in previews, but when I caught the play about a week into its run the accents were nothing to be scared of—anybody who grew up watching “Darby O’Gill & The Little People,” or anybody who has no problem understanding a Lucky Charms commercial should have no trouble understanding the play. Unfortunately, the damage there is probably already done—being panned as “incomprehensible” will keep some people away who would have otherwise gone. It’s a shame too, because in my opinion, the BTE put on one of the strongest shows I’ve ever seen them do. Maybe the local newspaper pan put some of the fightin’ Irish into the Ensemble, because they dig into this play with a fiery and full-bodied performance that conveys both the deep drama and uproarious humor with equal force.

Pub regulars, Pegeen, and Daniel Roth as Pub Owner Michael Flaherty

In a little Podunk town near the western coast of Ireland a stranger wanders into the local pub one night. This stranger is exhausted from wandering, bedraggled and obviously carrying some sort of emotional burden, and the townspeople, their curiosity piqued, eventually coax him into telling his tale: His name is Christy Mahon and he’s on the run after having murdered his own father in a fit of passion.

What happens next is surprising. Instead of casting him out, calling the police, or even recoiling in horror from this revelation, the townspeople are fascinated and ultimately impressed by the young man. Perhaps bored by their own drab lives and their inability to change their circumstances, Christy’s act seems to strike them as a kind of glorious acting out. They think they could never be capable of such a boldly violent and decisive action, but the joke is that Christy isn’t really capable of it either. He’s a timid young man mistaken for a strutting antihero, and part of the fun of the play is watching him as he stretches himself to try and inhabit his new role. Particularly in his halting courtship with the pub owner’s daughter Pegeen Mike, an appealingly bashfulness imbues the character.

The scenes between Christy, played by Richard Cannaday, and Pegeen Mike, played by Cassandra Pisieczko, are where the story morphs from social satire to something deeper and more personal, and the tragedy of these two characters is the tragedy of the play.

Cassandra Pisieczko and Richard Cannaday as Pegeen and Christy

Both actors bring a wonderful chemistry to these scenes, and the sense of surprise they convey at the budding romance (as if both expected disappointment from the start and is shocked that any other outcome is possible) is contagious. Their part of the story gives the audience a hook to hang their emotions on and offers a breather between the belly laughs provided by the supporting cast, especially Elizabeth Dowd as a widow who’s in the market for a new husband but would settle for a new goat, and Daniel Roth as the drunken pub owner.

The set, which consists of the pub and two layers of background hills visible through windows and to the side of the building is simple but very effective. And there are numerous touches that show the thought and craft that went into its construction, particularly the slight angle the pub is built at. It’s a small detail, but adds immeasurably to the audience’s perceptions of the set as a physical space.

Really, there are finely crafted emotionally modulated performances all around.

Village girls, Christy, and Elizabeth Dowd as the Widow Quin

A real pitfall for actors when putting on a play like Playboy, with its overabundance of zesty speeches and back and forth dialogue, is to quickly ascend to the highest plane of excitement or anger and remain in that shrill key for the rest of the play. Search the New York Times archives for The Playboy of the Western World and you’ll find that’s a trap Broadway productions of this play fell into more often than not. But the BTE production gets the tone nearly perfect. Trying to describe it, you’re bound to come up with seemingly contradictory phrases. It’s a tragic comedy. It’s wordy, but physical. Intellectually weighty, but has moments of comedy that verges on the bawdy. But most importantly it’s a hugely entertaining production by the BTE, and that’s no contradiction at all.

Nick McGaw lives and works in Bloomsburg.  He is a graduate of Alfred University and the co-owner of Endless Records.

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