THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 3, 1996 TAG: 9602020035
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
THE GHOST of the Danish king, a fog-trailing night vision, has come to call. Since his murder a few months earlier, his wife has married his brother and his son has become depressed.
The apparition has a message: Avenge my death.
It is all too much for Hamlet. He falls into a trance, turns his back on the ghost and sits, eyes closed. As the haunt intones its tale of ``murder most foul,'' it hovers over the prince, slowly closing its robes around him - like cave walls sheltering a wounded beast.
As one character says of the whole scene: ``Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.''
It's not the typical interpretation. Most actors portraying the prince stare wide-eyed at the ghost, aghast and amazed.
``The way we're handling it, it's almost as though I'm dreaming of the ghost,'' said David McCann, who plays the melancholy Dane in the Virginia Stage Company production opening Friday at Norfolk's Wells Theater. ``The ghost is really there, but it's almost as if I'm hypnotized by him. So when he leaves, it's as though I'm coming out of a dream.''
As the ghost departs, McCann drops to the stage floor in a faint. When he awakes, rather than appear stricken, he nearly looks pleased.
``I have seen this vision, this dream,'' McCann explained. ``It's quite something, and I'm really excited.''
The way the actor sees it, after months of inner chaos, Hamlet has been handed clarity - and a plan.
On a supper break, the actor, wearing sweats and running shoes, was downing a large bowl of no-fat broccoli soup. McCann has lost a few pounds since he played the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha in ``A Perfect Ganesh'' last year at the VSC.
In preparation for ``Hamlet,'' he has been working out at the gym for six months. ``I go for two hours a day, six days a week,'' said McCann. ``That's just so I have enough air and leg strength.''
He'll need both. McCann is on stage for most of the show - that's nearly three straight hours of talking and emoting, topped off with a rigorous swordfight.
And he's no child. The second day of rehearsals, Jan. 3, was also his 40th birthday. ``Well, if there's any way to lessen the sting of turning 40,'' McCann said, ``it's rehearsing your favorite role in your favorite play.''
From Laurence Olivier to Mel Gibson, actors have played Hamlet at many ages. While McCann has appeared in about 18 Shakespeare productions in the last two decades, this is only his second time portraying Hamlet.
Last go 'round, he was in his early 20s. The setting was the now-defunct Peachtree Playhouse in Atlanta.
``I just dove in. I just learned the lines,'' McCann said. ``And I think I tried to put as much emotional truth in it as I could. I remember thinking that I knew what I was doing, and, boy, was I going to be good.
``That arrogance serves you on one level, but I think it cuts out three-quarters of what's happening in the play. Because, I don't think Hamlet was an arrogant man.''
Now, McCann believes humility better serves him. He said he prefers to be a conduit for Shakespeare's genius, a vessel for the character.
Not that he doesn't place himself in the role. ``I sort of think Shakespeare knew I would be born some day, and that's why he wrote it,'' he said. ``I've felt that way ever since I first read it.''
He leaned back, counting off the traits he shares with the dark-hearted Dane.
``I think too much. My emotions are about that far from the surface at all time. I react very badly to betrayal. Like Hamlet, I react to big questions by going inside and thinking them through.''
Yet, what drives him in this mammoth effort - started in summer, as he began memorizing a maddening profusion of lines - goes beyond personal satisfaction. He really wants to turn people on to this great play, and to Shakespeare.
``If we do it right, this is not a foreign language. You don't need to read `Cliff's Notes' before you get here.''
The director, VSC artistic director Charlie Hensley, had the 15-member cast spend the first four days of rehearsal translating every line into vernacular English. If the actors completely understood all the lines, he reasoned, the clarity would be there once they returned to Elizabethan dialogue.
Student performances held last week were the first litmus test.
``It's a lot easier to watch than it is to read,'' said Sarah Fisher, a senior at Hampton Roads Academy in Newport News.
``I can't understand half of it,'' said Michael Alexander, a Hampton Roads Academy sophomore.
``I thought it was good. Everything they said was clear and easy to understand,'' said Jay Ronquillo, a senior at Catholic High School in Virginia Beach. ``This is the first Shakespeare play I've seen. It flowed really well. There wasn't anything that confused me.''
Like all of Shakespeare's plays, ``Hamlet'' offers plenty of opportunity for interpretation. This VSC production seems especially rich in fresh notions about one of the Bard's most-admired plays.
In many versions, Hamlet and his mother Gertrude are seen as involved, to one degree or another, in an incestuous relationship. Hensley, however, saw her as a mother with a more normal affection for her son.
Nor does the stage company's Gertrude illustrate Hamlet's famous comment about his mother: ``Frailty, thy name is woman.'' Here, she is not merely an ornament to her royal husbands. ``She's a woman who gets caught in a situation,'' McCann said.
Also, the same actor will portray both the ghost and the murderous King Claudius. McCann played both roles in recent productions in Orlando, Fla., and in Boston, and loves the idea.
``There are similarities between brothers,'' he said. ``Plus, it gives one actor a wonderful opportunity to play both the bad guy and the good guy.''
The actors will not assume Elizabethan accents.
``I don't think audiences need any more distancing from this play than they're already prepared for with the Elizabethan language,'' McCann said. ``I think it's too easy for people to get lulled to sleep by bad English accents.'' Ironically, this will be the first time since McCann became a VSC regular in late 1993 that he has not taken on an accent. In ``Sleuth'' and ``Blithe Spirit,'' he played Brits. For ``A Perfect Ganesh,'' he had Japanese and Hindu accents. He portrayed an Irish fisherman-poet in ``Sea Marks.''
Another surprising departure in the stage company production is to have Hamlet perform his soliloquies as though talking to the audience, rather than to himself or the ether.
A week ago, the idea both thrilled and frightened McCann.
``It's scary. And yes, it was much discussed,'' said McCann, who moved to Norfolk in spring 1994. ``I don't know whether it'll work or not.
``You have to be willing to trust the people in front of you, and make them a third character in the scene. And people here have been so willing to go with me on that. So I'm probably not as afraid of doing it this way as I would be anyplace else.''
McCann hopes direct address will help the audience become more involved in the story.
``I think if I were talking at them, that wouldn't happen,'' he said. ``But if they are included in the decision - to die or not to die - then they are a part of it. I think that makes a huge difference in whether or not people are willing to allow themselves to respond to something as big as `Hamlet.'
``So I feel like I'm among friends. If you know you have to go into the lion's den, it's really lovely to know you have friends with you.'' ILLUSTRATION: "HAMLET" REDUX
[Color Photos]
JIM WALKER
The Virginian-Pilot
David McCann as Hamlet in the Virginia Stage Company production
opening Friday at Norfolk's Wells Theater.
McCann with Brett Porter, the murderous King Claudius.
The VSC production seems rich in fresh notions about one of the
Bard's most-admired plays.
JIM WALKER
The Virginian-Pilot
``I sort of think Shakespeare knew I would be born some day, and
that's why he wrote it,'' says David McCann of ``Hamlet.''
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW by CNB