Review: Eddie Izzard HAMLET at Ricardo Montalban Theatre

The actor-comedian-activist generally known as Eddie Izzard sometimes goes by Suzy Eddie Izzard. In the solo performance of HAMLET that Izzard is touring around the world, she takes on the persona of nearly two dozen characters – kings, queens, lords, gravediggers, good and bad actors, ghosts and courtiers whose names we know very well. Suzy or Eddie, what’s in a name? The performer and the experience is remarkable.

Also challenging. The almost bare bones solo turn – at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre for a quickie six-performance run - is Izzard’s homage to the original performance practices of William Shakespeare, and also to her early years as a street performer. In this rendering, as Izzard notes before she gets things rolling, the fourth wall is down. Characters acknowledge the audience, talk directly to us and include us as conspirators. Per the notes by the performer, her brother (and adaptor) Mark Izzard and director Selina Cadell, the aim is accessibility. The more we feel like this story is being told to rather than for us, the deeper we care.

Under Izzard’s often hypnotic rendering, to invest or not to invest isn’t really a question. Making deft use of quick-shifting characterizations, an array of voices, expert stage technique and, oh yes, some rather killer source material, Izzard holds us captive for 2.5 hours, delivering this story in a way that many will never have seen (or are likely to again).

Her skill notwithstanding, audiences will have to work and stay focused. With so many characters ping-ponging around, a foreknowledge of the events and players of HAMLET will very much help. In addition to subbing out a few words here and there for some sort of contemporary equivalent (Hamlet informs Guildenstern here that he knows a “hawk from a heron,”) Mark Izzard drops in name identifiers so we can more consistently know who is being addressed, and who is replying. It helps, passably. But an evening of a single person crossing personas as quickly as Izzard is doing here risks losing anyone whose attention may stray.

And what about those personas! Suzy Eddie Izzard is 63, and – a leg brace from a knee injury that required surgery notwithstanding – seemingly in fantastic shape. Her sandy blond hair in a short ponytail, she wears a dark blazer over leather pants, her long finger nails loudly clicking as she snaps out a beat, and does not employ a single physical prop. As the cast of HAMLET, she traverses the central playing area of Tom Piper’s bare white set, varying her gait and mildly elevating or deepening her vocal tones as the occasion dictates. Many of Izzard’s characters are thoughtful, thinking before they speak (even a non-dithering Polonius). Yet the performer is also moving things along, bringing us to the intermission at the end of THE MOUSETRAP in 90 minutes.

The character shifts are often lightning quick and – the actor not given to bombast or high dudgeon – sometimes subtle. Her Claudius enjoys his bit of pomp and strut while her Queen Gertrude is quieter and more deferential. She brings out Ophelia’s innocence and loneliness both with Polonius and trying to negotiate some kind of a romance with Hamlet. The hesitation to her father’s instruction to stay away from Hamlet, “I… shall obey you, my lord,” is heartbreaking.    

Izzard delivers most of the plays more well-known monologues – some of them slightly trimmed down - directly to the audience at the front of the stage with Tyler Elich’s lights turning the walls red or purple.

He may be alone out there, but some technical wizardry and the actor's general dexterity allows for some creativity. A first act lighting effect to render the Ghost has Izzard’s Hamlet acting opposite his own shadow. And by depicting the idiotic schoolmate spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with his two hands as though they were sock puppets, Izzard generates plenty of laughs. The actor, it will be remembered, has enjoyed a celebrated career in stand-up comedy and he can find plenty of light moments in this very dark play. Hamlet’s verbal jousting with a gravedigger who is wittier and more droll even than himself is a particular highlight.

This ambitious stab at HAMLET would appear to be Izzard’s first professional performance of Shakespeare in a very long time, possibly ever. Turns out that even in his 60s, Suzy Eddie Izzard makes an exceptional Hamlet…and Claudius…and Ophelia….and all the rest.

HAMLET plays through Jan. 31 at 1615 Vine St., Hollywood.