Word: simonson
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...CHOOSING TO SET WILLIAM Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in a vaguely 1930's, vaguely military society under dictatorial rule, director Eric Simonson gives the audience more access than is usual to the social world of the play. But his interpretation also burdens the play with a sense of decorum it doesn't need. This production's overly civilized environment fails to depict human passions that function outside society, a necessary element of a truly successful tragedy...
...contrast, Simonson's focus on society does wonders for Roi's Ophelia, the revelation of this production. Unlike the standard, innocent interpretation, this Ophelia is a sophisticated and mature woman trapped by Hamlet's love because she has nothing else to which she can look forward. Her insanity and death painfully demonstrate the extreme fate of women in many cultures, who have no option but to marry and if that fails no reason to live...
...actors also blend well with this world, each performing according to the sensibilities of Simonson's civilized society. But they eventually suffocate in the environment they've so masterfully created, as their deaths at the end of the play are also precisely when Simonson's conception entraps them, preventing tragedy from emerging out of its concrete environment into a realm that transcends society...
Even as individual moments and performances delight, Simonson's Hamlet accomplishes little of the play's potential to purge human emotion and cleanse the spirit. The effort is admirable and is at many points entertaining, but the end result does little to rouse the audience's imagination to the full effect of this great tragedy...
...DIFFICULT TO call agitprop against South Africa hard-hitting; how many pro-apartheid plays get mounted in the U.S.? But THE SONG OF JACOB ZULU, which Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe brought to Broadway last week, redeems its overlong preachments with Eric Simonson's deft direction and K. Todd Freeman's luminous acting of the title role, especially a final monologue in which he unsentimentally uncorks the rage that drove a minister's son to terrorism. What makes the show unique is the unearthly beauty of a capella songs by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the group highlighted on Paul Simon's Graceland...