Rita Hutchinson
July 31, 2008
Helen Ann Hebert Martin
August 4, 2008
Director Charles Savoy is saying that Sam & Jim Acting Co.’s production of “Hamlet” is all method and no madness.
“If we can do ‘Hamlet,’ we can do any of Shakespeare’s plays,” Savoy said about his three-year-old Houma theater company. “It’s my favorite.”
Sam & Jim is staging Shakespeare’s best-known high tragedy Thursday, Aug. 28, to Sunday, Aug. 31, and Wednesday, Sept. 3, to Sunday, Sept.7, at the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center. All weekday performances, including Fridays, are at 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday performances are at 2 p.m., except for the Sept. 6 offering at 7 p.m.
Savoy’s “Hamlet” will be a minimalist production – the costuming and set design will be non-specific to place and time.
But don’t expect anything like Miramax’s 2000 “Hamlet” movie set in modern-day New York City and sporting a grunge Ethan Hawke as the brooding, unstable title character and Bill Murray as Polonius, who takes a bullet in his right eye from Hamlet instead of a blade through the belly.
Savoy’s production is classical all the way, with no modernizing of the Bard’s words.
“‘Hamlet’ is just the best play ever written,” Savoy said. “It’s (Shakespeare’s) deepest meditation on life. ‘Macbeth’ is a tighter thriller, ‘Othello’ is a greater tragedy, but ‘Hamlet’ is the greatest play ever.”
“It’s a poem unlimited,” he said. “Almost every line is poetry. It has the most outstanding language.”
“Hamlet” is probably the source of more phrases that have become part of the common language than any other work.
“The play’s the thing,” “get thee to a nunn’ry,” “murder most foul,” “to be, or not to be,” and Polonius’ famous puff philosophy advice to son Laertes, “neither a borrower nor a lender be” and “to thine own self be true” are all familiar phrases because of the popularity of “Hamlet.”
Savoy isn’t playing down the more sensational aspects of the work, which include the ghost of Hamlet the elder (seen by more than one person) and poison aplenty – ingested willingly through the mouth, and unknowingly in an ear and by the tip of a sword.
“”We’re going to have an exciting sword fight at the end, the best possible sword fight we can come up with,” Savoy said, adding that, in former times, people – probably the groundlings – would go to Shakespeare’s plays just to see the sword fights. “The more swordplay, the better.”
The ghost of Hamlet’s father occupies a bigger part than simply to confirm the younger Hamlet’s suspicion that Uncle Claudius murdered his way to the throne, said Savoy, who is playing the role of Claudius.
“The more sympathy you have for the ghost, the more sympathy you have for Hamlet’s struggle,” he said. “If you make the ghost too otherworldly, it’s off-putting. You’re not as sympathetic to Hamlet.”
“The play within the play is another reason it works so great,” he said. “The play is about theater, about voyeurism. He chooses to use a play to get to his uncle. That makes it the most theatrical of his plays.”
Josh Stelly, who is portraying Hamlet, said that the part requires displaying a wider range of emotion, from extreme anger to mania, than almost any other role.
“It’s a multidimensional character,” said Stelly, who has appeared previously in Sam & Jim’s “Fuddy Meers” and “The Shape of Things.” “If I’m not interesting, it could be boring. I feel I have to be really good.”
Andrea (Ani) Ashley plays Hamlet’s quick-to-remarry mother Queen Gertrude, who imbibes poison trying to save her son from her new husband. Ashley last appeared in Le Petit Theater de Terrebonne’s “Perfect Wedding” in April.
Toni Lynn Guidry, last seen in Thibodaux Playhouse’s “The Last Five Years,” is the ill-fated Ophelia, Hamlet’s spurned girlfriend.
Savoy said Sam & Jim is planning to produce one Shakespeare work each summer.
Admission to “Hamlet” is $15 general audience, $12 for those 21 and under, senior citizens and military personnel and veterans. Call (985) 804-0658 for more information.
Josh Stelly, Charles Savoy and Ani Ashley star in “Hamlet”
