Becoming Hamlet

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According to adapter Damon Horowitz and director Sybille Bruun of Becoming Hamlet, “Tonight, we invite you into Hamlet’s world, not just into his desperate situation, but into his mind and his experience. We invite you to feel what it is like to be Hamlet. You are not here as passive observers but as true participants, as human beings whose voices matter, whose responses are authentic, and whose quality of presence shapes what happens on this stage.”

The resulting Oracular Theatre Production of Becoming Hamlet must have sounded better on paper than it does in performance. Having the entire audience play the title role doesn’t work for several reasons: no one in the audience has been rehearsed or learned the text. Hamlet’s great soliloquies either chopped into a dialogue between Horowitz as our Hamlet Guide and a member of the audience or delivered by a non-actor destroys both the meaning and the poetry. Many audience members asked to read speak in so low a voice that it impossible to hear them and the lines are lost. Just being asked to say Hamlet’s lines does not put the audience in his mind as they struggle to say them correctly. One usually speaks of the actor or director’s interpretation of a role like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but here there is no interpretation just a great many different line readings.

The evening begins with the actors mingling with the audience and addressing each one as “Welcome, Hamlet.” The adapted text begins with all the actors on stage reciting Hamlet’s famous “Advice to the Players” speech which appears to be a lesson for the audience. The audience is prompted by four Facilitators who wander around the theater to either repeat words or phrases as the play is in progress. Some audience members seated in the front row have been given sides to read before the play starts and are prompted by the Facilitators. At other times, audience members are brought on stage to say Hamlet’s lines which are projected in yellow on the wall they are facing. The Facilitators often repeat lines said by Hamlet. Though the audience is “Hamlet,” Horowitz appears on stage as a character called Hamlet Guide and seems to have the bulk of Hamlet’s lines.

All of this works more as an interactive class than a finished performance. The poetry is lost as well as the meaning as everyone in the audience is involved with either saying lines or trying to understand the different readings. This in no way puts the audience in the mind of Hamlet which is the projected goal of the evening but puts Hamlet’s words into the mouths of untrained amateurs. This approach might have worked on some level had the acting of the professionals been better. The deep cuts including expendable characters like Francisco and Bernardo, as well as combining Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Osric do serve to make this a streamlined text which might be suitable for those not familiar with Shakespeare’s play. However, here the approach will confuse all but students of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Director Bruun has allowed so much over-the-top acting that the play is extremely uneven and doesn’t hang together. As our Hamlet Guide, Horowitz is rather bland to the point of having no interpretation of the character. On the other extreme, Desirée Baxter as his mother Gertrude is over-emotional even before her son begins his antic disposition. As his one-time girlfriend Ophelia, Jude Feingold is tense and overwrought from the moment we meet her, long before her unpleasant encounter with Hamlet in the palace foyer. David H. Littleton makes King Claudius who has followed Hamlet’s father, the late king, on the throne of Denmark, too much a heavy suggesting he is a villain from the first time he appears on stage, without any of the diplomatic niceties of a professional bureaucrat. Jim Pratzon makes Prime Minister Polonius a doddering old man to the point of hamminess, often saying his lines hesitantly. As his son Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, Steven Lamont is allowed to be histrionic to the nth degree which make his character not credible.

On the other hand, Equiano Mosieri’s Ghost of Hamlet’s father is quite effective, stationed on a balcony just above the audience and dressed in Amit Gajwani’s royal robes in black, gray and silver, giving him an otherworldly look. Unfortunately, his Gravedigger in the final act is so over emphatic than none of his character’s jokes land as they are supposed to. Tyler Moss’ Horatio, Hamlet’s college friend and confidant, is so much a hail fellow, well met kind of guy that he does not seem to know he is in a tragedy even though it is he who reveals to Hamlet at the beginning of the play that he has seen his father’s ghost walking on the battlements the night before, a sure sign that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. As the renamed Guildenkranz, Truman Gaudoin is too cheerful for this play, almost as though he had escaped from a television sit com sometime before.

Visually the play is impressive: Yijun Yang’s set made up of various platforms backed by a wall of mirrors in the black box Five Angels Theater would work well for almost any Shakespeare play. The elegant modern, formal costumes by Gajwani mostly in black but giving each character an additional color except for Claudius entirely in black and Guildenkranz in all white (Gertrude in a red jacket, Ophelia a in wine-colored dress, Polonius in a royal blue jacket, Hamlet in black and white, etc.) is most effective for royal attire. Maryam Sweirki’s subtle lighting uses startling shifts to red and blue for special effects. While the use of no furniture or almost no props except for Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia, Yorick’s skull in the graveyard scene, and swords and goblets for the fencing scene, this absence is not missed.

In recent years, we have become used to director’s reinterpretations of classics, partly to be made relevant, unique or controversial. An interesting experiment, this version of Hamlet must be considered a failure as it adds nothing to the understanding of the play and those not very familiar with the original text will not be able to follow it. As a class for actors, it might have its uses, but this is a production open to the public. Having experienced this evening in the theater, all one can say is that as a concept it doesn’t work for the reasons previously stated. One is left with the unanswered question: what were they thinking?

Becoming Hamlet (through October 3, 2026)

The Directors Company presentation of The Oracular Theatre

Five Angels Theater, 789 Tenth Avenue, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.becominghamlet.com

Running time: two hours without an intermission