By Stephanie Peters
Several generations – children, adults and college students alike – gathered together in the cool grass in the Boston Common under the dusk sky. They gathered not for an annual family barbecue, but instead to watch one of Boston’s most treasured summer pastimes – the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s (CSC) annual summer production, this year of “Hamlet.”
In its 10th season, “Free Shakespeare on the Common” has become a staple of the traditional Boston summer on par with Pops Goes the Fourth or the opening of the Swan Boats. In May 2003, CSC joined in collaboration with Boston’s Wang Center for the Performing Arts, realizing the organizations shared the goal of both educating and exposing Shakespeare to the masses.
Each year the company, an evolving group of experienced and noted actors, works through the spring and summer to prepare a midsummer, 20-show run of one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies or tragedies. In years past performances have included “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Macbeth,” “Julius Caesar,” and last summer’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” but this summer under the direction of co-founder Steven Maler, the CSC has finally undertaken Shakespeare’s most well-known work.
Maler’s cast is led by veteran actor Jeffrey Donovan (“Hitch,” “Touching Evil”) in the role of the tragic Prince Hamlet. It’s a complex character for even the most skilled actor to take on, a role with the potential to become as “tedious as a twice-told tale” (come on, what’s a Shakespeare review without a couple of cheesy line drops?), but this is never the case with Donovan’s performance. The actor manages to bring energy and intelligent wit into his character and shed the depressing indecisiveness expected from the youth both mourning his father’s death and plotting revenge against his uncle. Of course, he isn’t cured of his tragic flaw, but with Donovan Hamlet’s course of action seems more calculated than fate-driven.
The rest of the cast hardly stands out, but that’s to be expected with Shakespeare divvying the lion’s share of memorable lines in his tragic hero’s favor. The ghost of Hamlet Sr., played by CSC veteran Jeremiah Kissel, is the first character to catch and lock in the audience’s attention early in the play, arriving onstage with his bellowing, beyond-the-grave voice and an ethereal white, blood-drenched costume. After a dull beginning, Kissel’s revelations set the play and Hamlet’s madness in motion.
As Ophelia, CSC veteran actress Georgia Hatzis’s (“Much Ado About Nothing”) performance comes across as whiney and forced, her shining moment on stage turning out to be Maler’s creative addition of her enacted death, accompanying Queen Gertrude’s narrative.
(The careful viewer will also notice the Northeastern theatre department’s Michael Satow in a non-speaking role as a member of the ensemble cast.)
However, a couple of bland performances shouldn’t be cause for alarm. Donovan’s energy isn’t the only captivating, over-the-top element Maler’s production offers viewers. Maybe it’s to accommodate the size of the audience (the Wang Center says the CSC will play to an audience totaling 100,000 in its 20-production run) or maybe to draw your attention away from the play’s daunting length (be prepared to sit for nearly three and a half hours; a comfortable blanket or chair is a must), but the production elements are creative and impressive. Gone is the traditional Shakespearean garb, and in it’s place stands a more modern wardrobe and some entertaining use of unorthodox props guaranteed to draw laughs, and at the very least, the audiences’ attention.
The CSC’s production of “Hamlet” runs Tuesday – Saturday nights at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. through Sunday, Aug. 7 on the Boston Common Parade Grounds (at the corner of Beacon and Charles Streets.)
