closes Aug. 28
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By Tom Scanlon
Daniel Flint, Frank Lawler and Jason Marr’s script is a wonderful combination of smart and silly, twisting character’s motivations and tweaking the action just so. Lawler is also a delightfully funny actor, showing flashes of Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Phil Hartman as he plays a narrator, the Player King and King Claudius.
The cast is terrific, doing expert slapstick, manic delivery and goofy accents, yet never going too far over-the-top (thanks, director Scot Whitney). Machelle Allman is perfect as the boozing Queen – Allman is great at swinging a bottle of vodka around like it’s an appendage, and some of her pantomime acting is brilliant.
Sarah Lesley’s Ophelia is spectactularly unpredictable, as the actress finds endless comic possibilities in what is normally a dreary character. Flint, Jimmy Gilletti and Kevin Hyatt are consistently funny in twisted supporting roles – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are psychiatrists-in-training, for example.
Curiously, by far the least interesting character in this production is Hamlet himself, as Casey Brown gives a fairly straight-forward, traditional reading of the famous lines.
A bigger disappointment is in a lack of discipline, leading to an over-long comedy with a good half-dozen weak-link scenes. Indeed, the entire second act feels superfluous and uninspired, as a steady roar of first-act laughter dims to the occasional giggle.
Even so, it’s one of the funniest comedies of the year on Seattle stages, and with some slicing and dicing, could go on to a long life elsewhere.
Jill Carter’s video backdrop – often with Terry Gilliam-like devilishness – provides a superb layer of visual comedy, ingeniously balancing the Spartan production with stock footage visual winks.