The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is one of Shakespeare's best-known plays. It's been staged countless times so it's almost impossible to breathe new life into it. For its production of Hamlet this month Cooperative Performance Milwaukee has the power of a very, very classy venue to help it out. The Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum is a truly beautiful space. The production takes advantage of the space by staging three different places in and around the beautiful complex on 2220 North Terrace Avenue overlooking the lake. The play begins in the waning natural light found in a courtyard. Things begin to look more and more bleak as the sun sets. By the time of the first intermission, the performers are mere silhouettes consorting with shadows. After an initial intermission, the show moves to a terrace overlooking Lake Michigan. All of the remaining light drains from the sky and the performance space is illuminated. The drama's finale is played out below the terrace with the audience assembled on a vast fabric . . . we all sit or lay in complete comfort as everybody except Horatio dies. It's a really fun evening on the strength of the venue alone. That there are some really good performances here is just extra.
The title character is played here by Catherine Friesen. She's got a solid approach to the material that seems very, very internally consistent, but I can't remember ever actually liking a performance in that title role. (Jordan Gwiazdoski came really, really close in a mutation of the tragedy he did at the Alchemist for Fools For Tragedy, but that aside I've never really loved any performance in the role.) Friesen has a fun energy about her in the more playful side of the tragic prince, but the more serious moments are really, really difficult for any actor to get ahold of. . .
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Mark Corkins brings a very high-gravity presence to the role of Claudius. I don't recall ever seeing a Claudius rendered with this kind of power and depth before. Kind of tilts the entire drama in his direction, but only kind of. There's a balance that comes with impressive performances elsewhere in the ensemble.
It's always weird to see how a Shakespeare production comes together with respect to individual performances. Some actors are more compelling than others in different ways from production to production. Every staging has a different set of fingerprints. This one seems to have really prominent and impressive performances by a disparate array of supporting players.
Zach McLain brings a compassionate kind of nice guy sympathy to the role of Horatio . . . even managing a bit of clever comedy with a music cue.
The costuming on Rosencranz and Guildenstern is fun . . . here they kind of look like pseudo-contemporary college hipsters/ And I loved the distinct personalities that play out on both characters. Ashlea Wleklisnki gives particularly interesting depth to Rosencranz. Now that I've finally seen those roles played with distinction, I'd like to see her and Eric Scherrer in an accompanying production of the Tom Stoppard piece featuring those characters at the same venue.
Though I always liked the way it was written, the scene with the skull never felt particularly noteworthy to me until I saw it performed here and that has a lot to do with Danielle Leving's performance as the Gravedigger. She adopts what to my ear sounds kind of like an Eastern European accent. It's really a beautiful rendering of a marginal character that mirrors Ashela Wleklinski's as Rosencranz. It's nice to hear fresh echoes around the corners with actors fitting into characters like that.
So I liked the performances in the periphery of a production that has such beautifully peripheral spaces. Seeing a classic like this at a venue like Villa Terrace is probably one of the classier evenings of theatre to come about at the end of summer.
Cooperative Performance Milwaukee's production of Hamlet runs through August 30th at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum. For more information, visit Cooperative Performance Milwaukee Online.
