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No matter what else transpired -- and indeed, there was much -- on the Festival stage last night for the season-opening production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, it's fair to say the evening's biggest question mark buzzed around Paul Gross, and his ability to interpret the role that, for the last 400 years, has challenged the world's greatest actors, including John Barrymore, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.
This is, after all, a role that reverberates in our collective conscience like no other. The questioning Prince of Denmark has become synonymous with our concept of the intellectual. This is a man who, faced with the task of avenging his father's murder, burrows so deeply into his own psyche that he pops out the other side, ultimately transcending himself -- and perhaps, existence -- with his final phrase, "The rest is silence."
Hamlet is the ultimate tight-rope test for any actor. And interest in Gross's interpretation has been torqued even higher than usual because of his background: Not only is Gross best known for his cartoonishly cool portrayal of the Mountie on the popular Canadian TV series Due South, but Hamlet marks his first stage role in 12 years. Casting the handsome 40-year-old actor has also proved to be a box-office boon, much like film star Keanu Reeve's headline-grabbing portrayal of the part at Winnipeg's Manitoba Theatre Centre several seasons ago.
So then. Amid all this hoopla, how does Gross's Hamlet fare?
I can almost hear the hair-pulling purists lamenting this gutsy, frantic, often over-the-top and strangely -- at times, almost overwhelmingly -- hilarious version of Shakespeare's tragedy. But for this observer, Gross's madcap look at the melancholy prince makes for a fascinating, insightful and downright invigorating evening of theatre.
At the outset, it appears we're in for a tamely traditional rendering. The fog rolls predictably in as Horatio and the sentinels chatter on about the "portentous figure" haunting the grounds. And with the top hats, frock coats and riding crops of designer Christina Poddubiuk, all signs point to a straight-ahead slice of princely indecisiveness.
And then Gross hits the stage.
Taking Shakespeare's "unmanly grief" to heart, our early visions of Gross's Hamlet are of a sobbing, slobbering wreck of a man whose overwhelming grief at the death of his father reduces him, at one point, to a writhing, spastic mass. And that's just the start of things.
By the evening's end, Gross has pulled out all the stops, at times -- especially during his bouts of feigned insanity -- evincing a frantic funniness that calls to mind the absurdist clowning of Groucho Marx. But as with Marx, there is great method to this madness. Gross never lets us lose sight of the fact that his fluttering fingers and fast-paced quips -- and there are moments when he veers into something akin to a nihilistic nincompoop -- are grounded in grief. Just when you think he's come completely unglued, Gross jolts us back on track with a quiet bit of clarity.
Clearly, director Joseph Ziegler plays a big part here. Whenever possible -- as with a brief bit of business regarding the identities of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern -- Ziegler pulls the punchlines from the pathos. I never, for instance, thought I'd hear an audience roar with laughter as Hamlet, dragging the dead Polonius by his heels, yells out "Night mother!" But there it was.
Our greatest clowns are often our saddest people. Here, finally, an actor has made the risky leap into a Hamlet that punctures pretence with laughter, and uses comedy to kick us into a refreshingly relevant interpretation of this complex tale.