A Less Than Noble Youth: 'Hamlet' the Childish

What a piece of work is a boy! From his very first entrance, you're made to feel as if Jeffrey Carlson's flaxen-haired Hamlet has a whole lot of growing up to do.

His shirttails out, his blond mop an unruly mess, he's got a sullen teenage thing going on. Downstairs in an Elsinore banquet room, his mother and newly minted stepfather are celebrating their creepy, fast-track nuptials. Over the balcony railing Carlson tosses Hamlet's shoulder bag, which lands amid the revelers with a thud. Nothing like an angry kid to spoil the party.

That sort of blunt impact is what Carlson and director Michael Kahn go for throughout Shakespeare Theatre Company's viscerally emotional "Hamlet," an interesting new take but only a limited success. Using as its energy source Carlson's perpetual state of agitation -- this is a Danish prince to whom an "antic disposition" comes naturally -- Kahn's staging becomes something like an examination room for the observation of a grief-stricken child.

Enter Hamlet, overwrought. While the character's resentments artfully marinate in the peevish gazes of Carlson -- whose fine Nordic-looking features seem sculpted for the role -- something's underdeveloped in the state of Denmark. This Hamlet never quite manages to transcend post-adolescent petulance, to convince us he has matured into the man so fully cognizant of the tragic condition about which he soliloquizes.

Given the weight of expectation, the way in which Shakespeare's speeches have been etched in our memories, a totally satisfying "Hamlet" might be too much to ask. How does an actor possibly say the words "To be, or not to be," or "O, what a rogue and peasant-slave am I?" as if they're being uttered for the first time?

The solution Kahn and Carlson appear to have settled on in this modern-dress production is Hamlet as psychological mess, a tangled heap of frayed nerve endings, for whom brilliant verbal dexterity is all reflex. Words are not so much considered as sputtered. This might be the least introspective Hamlet you'll ever encounter.

The trauma of his father's death -- one that he's told by the old man's ghost was murder -- provokes this Hamlet to endless physicalizations of self-torment and despair. Carlson pounds and pounds on his forehead, rubs and rubs his fingers through his hair, falls to the floor, prostrate.

It's the same manic shtick, over and over. The soliloquies are spewed in anxiety-fueled spurts, all at high speed. Since there are so many -- the Royal Shakespeare Company's new edition of the plays says Hamlet speaks about 40 percent of the tragedy's words, the highest proportion of any character in the canon -- the problem of undifferentiated delivery gives you pause: You begin to tune out the speeches. As for his feigning of madness, well, Hamlet seems a basket case here from the get-go.

Following the pattern of his thoughtful "Othello" in 2005, Kahn imposes little in the way of directorial froufrou, so that when an actor is hitting his marks and doing it well, all's right with the world. Never is that clearer than when triple threat Ted van Griethuysen is onstage. Playing three choice roles -- Ghost, First Player and Gravedigger -- van Griethuysen offers a trio of elegant mini-portraits, each sharp, distinct and stirring.

The early scene in which Polonius (Robert Jason Jackson) and Ophelia (Michelle Beck) bid farewell to their son and brother Laertes (Kenajuan Bentley) is another keenly realized interlude. The bonds among these important characters feel meaningful: The impression of a tight and open family is created, in counterpoint to the royals and the disturbing truths about them that Hamlet must relentlessly force into the light.

The seeds for those revelations are planted in the handsomely executed scenes with the Players, whom Hamlet recruits to dramatize for Claudius (Robert Cuccioli) and Gertrude (Janet Zarish) a regicide like the one the Ghost described to him. In this case, the spoken portions of the play-within-a-play are in Kabuki style, while the dumb show is performed with those increasingly ubiquitous participants in American theater: bunraku puppets, courtesy of Aaron Cromie.

The contemporary effects, from designer Walt Spangler's transparent, modular set elements to Adam Wernick's spare, chilling music, work to the advantage of a director seeking to keep the flourishes understated. (In one clever brush stroke, the book that Kahn has distracted Hamlet reading when he's accosted by Polonius is "The Savage God," A. Alvarez's examination of suicide in culture and literature.)

The interactions of the usurping king, his fickle wife and the young heir to the throne do not play out with quite so much agility. Cuccioli -- like Carlson, an alumnus of Kahn's sterling "Lorenzaccio" -- portrays Claudius as a most genial of bad guys, his evil swept behind a curtain of charm, and that proves a more effective approach than that of Zarish, whose Gertrude remains frustratingly inscrutable.

Cloaked in the impetuosity of youth, Carlson's Hamlet is least persuasive when the character has to be the most cunning. (Recall that he tells the king the name of the drama the Players stage is "The Mousetrap.") Deep into the play, would this impulsive Hamlet possess the powers of restraint that allow him to sheathe his dagger, at the moment when the neck of solitary Claudius is in reach? The words of the playwright say yes, but the wired behavior of the actor says something else.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Michael Kahn. Costumes, Murell Horton; lighting, Charlie Morrison; sound, Martin Desjardins; fight director, David Leong; With David L. Townsend, J. Clint Allen, Pedro Pascal, Bill Largess, Maria Kelly, James Denvil, Nick Vienna. About 3 hours 20 minutes. Through July 29 at the Shakespeare Theatre, 450 Seventh St. NW. Call 202-547-1122 or visit http://www.shakespearetheatre.org.