Review: EDDIE IZZARD IN HAMLET at Shakespeare Theatre Company
Eddie Izzard puts on a bravura performance as Hamlet, and every other character, in her one-person take on Shakespeare's greatest.
Protests against kings notwithstanding, Eddie Izzard has brought her celebrated one-person production of Shakespeare’s Danish royal court tragedy to our nation’s capitol — and what a production it is.
Those familiar with Eddie Izzard’s illustrious stand-up career will already be intimately aware of her gift for effortlessly stepping in and out of an endless array of absurd, instantly recognizable characters. In Hamlet, this distinct style comes across as a razor-sharp weapon, finely honed over decades, with which Izzard cuts to the very heart of one of the most familiar works of the theatrical canon. So convincing is her Hamlet that the question very quickly transforms from “how does one person perform such a play” into “how was this play ever performed any other way?”
Hamlet is full of famous moments and lines repeated so frequently that they can come to lose all meaning — not so in this scaled-back presentation that perfectly synthesizes with the matter and context of its source material. After all, what’s a more fitting platform for a one-person play than a tragedy concerned with the human struggle against the roles we are forced into and find ourselves destined to play out?
To a degree, Hamlet, the character, has always been something of a one-person play all to himself, what with the way he snaps in and out of character, affects madness, perhaps even becomes fully mad. Izzard extends this sensibility to Hamlet in its entirety. Armed with no props or costumes, wielding only words, words, and words, she conjures twenty-three characters like apparitions out of thin air for the audience’s eyes alone. And somehow, by some strange magic, these characters can freely converse, argue, and duel each other — in a climactic coup de theatre that needs to be seen to be believed, Izzard even manages the feat of having one of her characters menacingly circle another.
There’s also the fascinating question of gender and how Izzard turns Shakespearean-era cross-dressing on its head, specifically donning an unmistakably feminine silhouette to perform the largely male cast. Her most interesting choices are likely in the demarcation between her male and female parts, differences that are so often incredibly exaggerated, but in Izzard’s performance are ever so delicately subtle. If anything, the star of Izzard’s ensemble is not her Hamlet but her haunting, harrowing Ophelia.
Izzard’s stand-up roots remain visible in this very different kind of performance, in an exceedingly welcome way that lends a much-needed lightness to what could have easily become a heavy and tiresome two hours. She wisely sprinkles in moments of well-judged jest, comedy, and physical humor that breathe air into the evening while also lovingly acknowledge and accept the absurdities in Shakespeare’s melodrama.
Eddie’s brother, Mark Izzard, has done well to carve Shakespeare’s gargantuan texts into a faithful but simplified telling that lets her performance fill in the gaps. Purists may take issue with the approach but—in the words of the bard himself—brevity is the soul of wit.
Izzard’s efforts are further amplified by the rest of the creative team, most audibly by the music of Eliza Thompson which adamantly asserts itself throughout and proves highly effective as a tone-setter for such an otherwise barren production. Housed in the Klein Theatre, the smaller and more intimate of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s spaces, Tom Piper’s set and Tyler Elich’s lights work brilliantly together to create a platform for Izzard that is simultaneously completely vacuous but capable of becoming anything she demands it to be. It’s a truly dynamic stage she can step in and out of, in which perspective can shift and a wall can become a floor in an instant.
All these elements succeed in the production’s stated goal to call back to the original context of Shakespeare as theater the common person could relate to and enjoy — but even with that added lightness and shedded pretense the tragedy very much remains there. This is no comedic revamp of Hamlet. Izzard’s monologues are earnest and sincere. Her duel between Hamlet and Laertes is slow and grueling. Her finale is bleak. And the rest is silence.
Eddie Izzard in The Tragedy of Hamlet performs at Shakespeare Theatre Company's Klein Theatre through April 11. Runtime is approximately two hours and five minutes with one 15-minute intermission.
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