Madness In Hamlet

Worcester Shakespeare puts different take on 'Hamlet'

By William Shakespeare, directed by Michael Burnet & Mel Cobb. Presented by Worcester Shakespeare Company at the Green Hill Park Memorial Grove Amphitheatre, Skyline Drive, Worcester. Performances Aug. 10,12,14 and 18 at 7 p.m., Aug. 20 at 7 p.m. at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, 1 Southbridge St. Ticket prices for Green Hill Park: $20, general admission; $15 for seniors and students; children 12 and younger free with accompanying adult. Hanover Theatre: $25, $20 seniors and students, children 12 and younger free. For reservations, visit www.worcestershake-
spearecompany.org. Call (877) 571-7469 for the Hanover Theatre performance. With Michael Burnet, Mel Cobb, Anne Elezabeth Pluto, Bill Taylor, Douglas Seldin, Jamie Greenland, Ehren Remal, Danny Goodman, Vasilios Asimakos, Eamon Pac, Cameron Miller, John Macey, Eric McGowan, Andrew Hitzhusen, Chuck Schwager, Danny Zeliger, Heather MacKenzie, Alexandra Tennant, Claire Frechette and Jennifer Riedell.
WORCESTER  —  Michael Burnet seems to know exactly what he wants. As the co-director and title character of Worcester Shakespeare Company’s production of “Hamlet,” he’s taken a fascinating detour from the usual portrait of fulsome acridity and tormented remorse in favor of a more cerebrally nuanced and emotionally disciplined interpretation of Shakespeare’s most famous creation.

It’s less demonstrative, more muted, than Sean Gardell’s recent success in the role at Stageloft Repertory Theater, but in the context of what Burnet and his co-directing partner, Mel Cobb, brought to the opening night performance on Wednesday, it’s a gambit that pays off handsomely. To be sure, there is the occasional spark of anger in Burnet’s mostly dulcet vocal tone, but there is a quiet melancholy in the way he admonishes Jamie Greenland’s Ophelia to “get thee to a nunnery” that later validates his claim to have loved her during the burial scene.

This is a Hamlet who sidesteps depression and rage with a dose of medicinal irony and tattered affection. There is more genuine warmth in his reunion scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (a well-matched Danny Goodman and Vasilios Asimakos) than is usually the case, and Burnet’s fond recollection of Yorick includes a bit of delightful mimicking of the childhood court jester.

It’s a bracingly intelligent production that could use a little fire from Anne Elezabeth Pluto’s timorous portrayal of Gertrude.

Hamlet and Madness: Madness in Revenge Drama by Shakespeare and ...

The question of Hamlet’s madness has been discusses by scholars for many years, with various arguments put forward as to whether Hamlet is pretending to be madness, or whether he is pushed over the edge of sanity by the events of the play. Is his “antic disposition” entirely assumed in an attempt to “by indirections find directions out”, or has his pose become all too real?

In dealing with the issue of Hamlet’s “antic disposition”, we can draw on a long tradition of madness in revenge tragedy . Shakespeare didn’t come up with the idea of a mad revenger, after all: Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy . In the book they argue that madness is the often the only way out for characters who, like Hamlet, are caught between conflicting demands that cannot be resolved. Madness removes the moral quandary and permits the energetic actions that revengers, and revenge tragedy, rely upon.

Madness can be a more tactical matter, as well.