STRATFORD -- If you want a Hollywood ending, then go to Hollywood.

There, the story of a TV star returning to the classical stage could only end in triumph.

In Hollywood, Paul Gross would have emerged from last night's opening performance, playing the title role in Hamlet, as the new Olivier, or at the very least, as a bonafide star of both stage and screen.

But that opening wasn't in Hollywood. It was here -- on the stage of the Festival Theatre, to be precise -- and Gross emerged not as a new lion of the stage, but as a competent actor who's done a pretty good job of retaining his chops when it comes to live performance.

He may not be the perfect Hamlet -- a brooding prince driven mad by grief -- but he is a credible one in a performance marked by an affable, open charm that too often borders on the manic.

Directed by Joseph Ziegler, this is a clean, crisp production, set in the early 19th century, shortly after the fall of Napoleon. Clocking in at over three hours, it also feels a trifle on the long side, for all that it is significantly shorter than the full-length edition.

For Gross's return to the stage, Ziegler has surrounded him with some impressive talent. Benedict Campbell is cast as an oily Claudius, the uncle who murders Hamlet's father to steal both his brother's throne and his wife.

As that wife, Domini Blythe essays a touching Gertrude.

Jerry Franken is cast as Polonius, the rambling advisor to the throne, while an impressive Graham Abbey plays his son, Laertes, and a less impressive Marion Day, his daughter, Ophelia, driven mad by Hamlet's rejection of her and his murder of her father.

David Keeley makes a welcome return to the Stratford stage as Horatio, while Juan Chioran impresses in a hat trick as the ghost of Hamlet's father, the grave digger and the player king.

In the end, however, this production -- as does every production of Shakespeare's classic tragedy -- rises and falls on the strength of the actor playing the title role.

That he was willing to tackle the role in such a public manner says much of Gross's mettle and happily, there is much to recommend his performance.

His control of Elizabethan text is impressive and he moves exceedingly well on what is possibly one of the most difficult stages in Canada -- and manages to fill both the stage and the auditorium in the process.

But ultimately his characterization is small and if he has a clear picture of what's going on inside his character's head and heart, he doesn't succeed in sharing it with his audience.

This Hamlet is spoiled and petulant and his bizarre behaviour could as easily be written off as an undiagnosed case of Attention Deficit Disorder as grief-induced madness.

Certainly, it's charming. But that it works for Hamlet as well as it works for Gross is less certain.

But then, there seems to be as many people who want to see Gross as want to see Hamlet, so at least half of 'em are certain to be pleased as punch.

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