On the way toward penning perhaps the most well-known play in the English language, William Shakespeare coined handfuls of words and expressions in the pages of “Hamlet” that we still use today.
If there’s an image that could represent all of English-language theater, it would be Hamlet holding and peering at a skull, as he does toward the end of the play. Yet despite the work’s familiarity, it remains fertile ground for fresh interpretation.
St. Louis Shakespeare Festival launched its 25th season last week with just its second production of “Hamlet” in Forest Park, after first performing it for the company’s 10th birthday.
Michael Sexton, an expert on Shakespeare’s text who has directed plays and run a public Shakespeare initiative at the Public Theater in New York, directs the production. The free show is onstage at Shakespeare’s Glen in Forest Park through June 22.
“‘Hamlet’ takes many side trips, and there are conversations and ruminations and meditations on a variety of subjects. The play is just chock-full — overstuffed, even — with explorations of different kinds,” Sexton said before a rehearsal.
Sexton noted that scholar Harold Bloom took the title of his book, “Hamlet: Poem Unlimited,” from a quote by Polonius, the pontificating royal adviser and father to Ophelia. “It really is more than a play — or other than a play. It is a sort of limitless poem that moves in multiple directions at once,” the director said.
St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s production is inspired by the fashion, art, architecture and music of mid-20th century Manhattan. Sexton cites as inspiration the murals of Mark Rothko, New York’s Seagram Building and the innovations of jazz masters Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and others.
A key contributor to the sound of the show is East St. Louis trumpet player Brady Lewis. Lewis stands atop set designer Scott Neadle’s stage, playing live in sync with Brandon Wolcott’s sound design. Wolcott and Lewis collaborated throughout rehearsals, composing and recording new bits of jazz-influenced music as they went.
Early in the play, when courtiers dance at King Claudius and Queen Gertrude’s wedding, a bit of meditative jazz suddenly transforms into the sort of deeply grooving hard bop that Miles Davis recorded during the mid-to-late 1950s. Free jazz in the style of Ornette Coleman accompanies a later moment, when Hamlet’s mental condition erodes.
“Jazz at that time is starting to really shift from a formal space to something that is more expressive and less melodic. What we found interesting about that was that it mirrored the progression of Hamlet,” Wolcott said.
The production also stands out by using a thrust stage: Part of it extends 30 feet into the usual seating area. There’s also a mechanized portion of the set that moves a key room around — another first for St. Louis Shakespeare Festival.
“Hamlet” marks Michael Khalid Karadsheh’s first time playing the lead in a Shakespeare play.
“Going into [the soliloquy] ‘To be, or not to be’ can be so intimidating and scary, to a point where you don't want to do it. You don't want to have to take this thing on that so many other great actors before you have done,” Karadsheh said.
He plays Hamlet as a quick-witted, high-energy, furiously passionate young man.
After the Danish prince confides to his friends that he plans “to put an antic disposition on” — that is, start acting bizarrely to confuse the people at court — Karadsheh, as Hamlet, laughs maniacally, and he rolls around in a patch of dirt.
“The reason these words are so famous is because they are so profound, and they don't have to be spun in any way. The power of them is in just performing them, and finding the truth. So that's all I'm tasked with doing,” Karadsheh added.
The play’s familiarity does not dull its force, said Jennifer Ikeda, who plays Queen Gertrude. The production cued her first return to St. Louis Shakespeare Festival after playing Juliet in the troupe’s inaugural Forest Park production.
“One of the joys of working on this play is getting to listen to the text every day, and getting to hear these incredible thoughts and ideas just being spoken aloud and explored,” Ikeda said. “There are moments in rehearsals where I just hear something and it brings tears to my eyes.”
Another nearby influence in Forest Park maintained its force since Ikeda’s 2000 performances.
“Waiting to go on backstage, and hearing the elephants and the sea lions, it is an extremely magical experience,” she said.
