We were wondering what it would be like. I was excited and curious. My parents were curious and trepidatious. A female Hamlet? One of the many good things about studying and teaching Shakespeare is that you are always, and I mean always, learning new things. It’s a license, an invitation, nay a requirement to be a life-long learner.
I had seen and savored Oscar Isaac’s Hamlet, at the Public Theater in New York, twice this summer, and was looking forward to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production featuring Lenne Klingaman in the title role. There’s a long history of female actors playing Hamlet, but most of them have played it as a “pants role” (that’s one of the things I learned at the talk back in Boulder. I had never heard the term, which refers to a woman playing a man, before.)
But Lenne Klingaman played the character of Hamlet as a woman. Though more rare, this, too, has been done before. What, apparently, has never been done prior to this landmark production is to have Laertes and Fortinbras as female characters played by women, as well. This choice is apt, and in my opinion really works, because Laertes and Fortinbras are natural foils to Hamlet. Like Hamlet, both have dead fathers who need to be revenged; each handles the mantle of avenger differently.
Ophelia was still a girl played by a girl, and I was completely unsnagged by the portrayal of her often nebulous relationship with Hamlet. I did find myself wondering: if I were a lesbian, would I have felt the portrayal underplayed or minimized any sexual pull or erotic undertones between the two characters? Was the implied elicit nature of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship hetero-washed, or was their mercurial sexual energy unremarkable because this production did such a seamless job of capturing how “Love is Love”? With all the issues the play of HAMLET deals with, gender and sexuality, at least in this production, and perhaps ironically, is not one of the main ones. That may be the craft of the production: to have so shifted the gender paradigms that it became more about the universality of family relationships and their natural power structures, the confusion of love, and how knowing death and deep loss can make you live differently than you ever thought you would, than about Hamlet being a princess instead of a prince.
Unfortunately, I did not think to get my stepdad a hearing device and our seats were all the way in the back. Being able to hear each word or line is less of an issue for me since I know the play so well now my brain tends to fill in mumbled, dropped, or cut lines. Not so for the hard of hearing, or those who don’t know the play super well. Both my parents thought that “Hamletta’s” voice was the hardest to hear, and my stepfather postulated this was because she was a woman. I have to say, my hearing is not the best, and I missed words and lines here and there at the Public Theater production this summer; but I didn’t have any difficulty understanding any of the actors in Boulder.
I was intrigued by the cuts, choices, and the way in which the actors kept the pace. I really liked the winter wonderland set, which seemed to bring the cold Denmark landscape inside the castle and its monarchical world. No wonder they are always drinking: it’s freezing in there! If I ever help put up a production of HAMLET, I’m definitely having Hamlet swig champagne out of the bottle.
A personal highlight for me was after the talk back when a few people, myself included, approached the stage to ask a few more questions of the actors, Klingaman in particular. I stood by and listened while Kathleen Burke (a young woman who had played Hamlet a few years earlier, during her senior year of high school at Denver School of the Arts, in a production with an all female cast) talked to Klingaman about how much the experience of playing Hamlet had meant to her, and how much she enjoyed Klingaman’s portrayal. It felt special to observe this interaction between two women who played the Danish Prince, and when Burke’s mom asked to take a picture of the two of them, I asked if I could take a picture as well.
#coloradoshakespearefestival #hamlet #hamletta #teachinghamlet #Lenneklingaman #kathleenburke #femalehamlet #pantsrole #loveislove #whynotawoman #summerofshakespeare @COShakes @lennek @mollygbooth @frislanduk @shadowteams