Review: It's BEDLAM at McCarter with SAINT JOAN and HAMLET

Four actors occupy the stage in Bedlam Theater Company's productions of HAMLET and SAINT JOAN running in McCarter Theatre's Berlind Theatre through February 12. If you attend both plays, you'll have the chance to watch the troupe portray dozens of characters each night as they perform the two classics in rotating repertory. But it is the playwright of SAINT JOAN, George Bernard Shaw, who leaves the longest lasting impression. His voice, his arguments, and his chronicle of the bargains made in the name of power, pragmatism, and faith steal the scene.

To Bedlam's credit, the voice of Shaw is presented clearly and resonates with our modern political and spiritual crisis. The quick pace, minimal set, props, and unconventional placement of the audience, are simple vehicles to better hear what Shaw has written.

It is in the Epilogue, three hours into the show, after a dissection of Protestantism, nationalism, Joan's trial and her death at the stake, that we understand our role as players in the cycle of history:

DE STOGUMBER. Well, you see, I did a very cruel thing once because I did not know what cruelty was like. I had not seen it, you know. That is the great thing: you must see it. And then you are redeemed and saved.

CAUCHON. Were not the sufferings of our Lord Christ enough for you?

DE STOGUMBER. No. Oh no: not at all. I had seen them in pictures, and read of them in books, and been greatly moved by them, as I thought. But it was no use: it was not our Lord that redeemed me, but a young woman whom I saw actually burned to death. It was dreadful: oh, most dreadful. But it saved me. I have been a different man ever since, though a little astray in my wits sometimes.

CAUCHON. Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Shaw wrote SAINT JOAN in 1923.

HAMLET, like SAINT JOAN, is staged with some audience members seated in the playing area. Much of the show is a matter of perspective, and the audiences is asked to reexamine expectations for this four-hundred year old classic, whose monologues soliloquies, and probing themes were no doubt well known by the Princeton audience in attendance.

With four actors playing all the roles, the relationships between the characters were less resolutely defined than they would be in a traditional casting. To be sure, the deliberate lack of scenery, costumes, props, and subtext, and nuanced language were choices that pushed other elements of the play center stage.

Bedlam's HAMLET and SAINT JOAN are performed by ensemble members Eric Tucker, Andrus Nichols, Edmund Lewis, and Tom O'Keefe. Bedlam Artistic Director Eric Tucker directs both shows.

Ticket Information and Performance Schedule

Performances for Hamlet and Saint Joan run January 13 - February 12 in the Berlind Theatre. Single tickets range

from $25 - $74 and are on sale now online at mccarter.org, by phone at (609) 258-2787, or in person at the McCarter

Theatre Ticket Office, located at 91 University Place in Princeton.

Hamlet runs 3 hours and 10 minutes, including two intermissions.

Saint Joan runs 3 hours, including two intermissions.

Photo credit: T. Charles Erickson

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