A Sweet Prince Has a Good Night

For the serious actor, performing Shakespeare becomes the consuming project of his age. Even the least Elizabethan among them finds it impossible to let those scripts alone — last year we saw Ann Bogart’s company take up “Macbeth,” and we will soon see the futuristic Wooster Group tackling “Hamlet.” No small fuss has been made over the visiting Trevor Nunn-Ian McKellan “King Lear,” in part because it feels like an education in how to “speak the speech.”In one place in New York, however, the company could have skipped the master class. The Pearl, under the artistic direction of Shepard Sobel, provides a unique service in New York: It keeps a resident company for the sole purpose of producing classics. In season after season, the sturdy ensemble speaks Marivaux and Aeschylus, letting the plays themselves teach the actors their facility with language. In their current “Hamlet,” every player — even poor, underused Fortinbras — moves with confidence through some of the Bard’s trickiest pentameter.Overwhelmingly, perhaps self-righteously modest, Mr. Sobel’s “Hamlet” refuses even the excusable luxury of props. Only if Shakespeare mentions it (a letter, a dodgy pearl), can it appear on stage. Mr. Sobel cans behavioral embellishments as well. To generalize wildly, the British method with Shakespeare is to create “business,” to find and distill gestures that particularize a part. Mr. McKellan’s shaking hands, for instance, show us Lear’s age. To obey the cliché, an American company should therefore work from the “inside out,” letting private psychological moments bubble to the surface. But Mr. Sobel denies his actors either tactic. Taking Hamlet’s own advice to the players, the company speaks “trippingly,” zooming through the lines with serious dispatch. No one even has time for a heavy sigh, “method” or not.Which is not to say that the actors aren’t acting. Dominic Cuskern plays Polonius on a droll note of busybody prissiness, tucking himself into everyone’s business with sublime social ignorance. And as Gertrude, Robin Leslie Brown seizes the closet scene by the throat. Yet where other actors might make meals of these roles, this company contents itself with measured bites. Such restraint results in a very frank encounter with the play — the audience watches with dry eyes, but never with less than perfect attention.And what about Hamlet himself? Sean McNall’s melancholy Dane isn’t actually very blue. He seems sweet, and clever, and capable of honing a rhetorical point to a cutting edge, but he is certainly no trembling avenger. He plays his jealousy of the macho Fortinbras with rueful humor: Sure, it might be nice to go and invade “a patch of ground” for no reason, but Hamlet just isn’t that guy.When he first appears, lurking in his Uncle’s court and exuding an air of menace, Mr. McNall hits his single false note. His understated manner is too well suited to Hamlet-as-philosophy-student; no usurper in his right mind would fear him. Instead, he is best when he can relax into language. Mr. McNall actually twinkles when he berates himself for being a “rogue and peasant slave,” perhaps because his perpetual bookworm loves the eloquence that springs from his self-doubt. In a perfectly self-effacing performance, Mr. McNall lets Hamlet disappear into the rapture of his own speeches. It makes the work intensely private — without demonstrative cues from the actor, we have only our own brains (and Shakespeare’s words) to go on.During last year’s “Toys in the Attic,” the bunker-like Pearl seemed to stretch. Certainly, the company’s actors exceeded their own best work, but the space also seemed to blossom into a comfortable expanse. With “Hamlet,” we are once again in cramped quarters, despite designer Harry Feiner’s clever arrangement of beaded screens. The painted floor and black curtains seem instantly dusty, and the Pearl sinks back into its familiar, shabby air.But what does sparkle — rather more successfully than the metallic costumes—is the experience. With a company in which these massive, career-defining roles are simply par-for-the-course (this season features Machiavelli, Ibsen, and Wilde), playing “Hamlet” doesn’t necessitate a fanfare. Perhaps the scene outside the St. Marks Theater isn’t quite the elbowing, frantic crowd down at BAM. But it might be time to form a line down that way as well.Until October 28 (80 St. Marks Place, between First and Second avenues, 212-598-9802).

A Sweet Prince Has a Good Night

A Sweet Prince Has a Good Night

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