The Theater: The Dane as Cipher

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HAMLET by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The best things in life may be free, but so are some of the worst. Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival is offering Hamlet for nothing at Central Park's Delacorte Theater, and it is worth nothing.

Sam Waterston is the most maladroit Hamlet to appear on a professional stage in the past decade. He bears not the remotest resemblance to a prince. He is like a little boy throwing a nightlong temper tantrum. His twitchy gestures suggest those of a puppet on the strings of a drunken puppeteer. His voice is woefully devoid of resonance. He delivers the Shakespearean line like a squawk box in dire need of a lozenge. Add to this little humor and less thought, and Hamlet the Dane becomes Hamlet the Cipher.

Tin-Pot Fascist. To judge by the uniforms worn at Claudius' court, the usurping king is a tin-pot fascist. Robert Burr plays the role like Dean Martin presiding at a "roast"; Andrea Marcovicci plays Ophelia like a stewardess in search of an Upper East Side singles bar; and if Ruby Dee's Gertrude is capable of loving either Claudius or Hamlet, it will certainly be news to them. Only Larry Gates, doubling as Polonius and the First Gravedigger, emerges from this fiasco with a modicum of merit.

The blameworthy director is Michael Rudman, but the greater responsibility lies with Papp. A public subsidy is a public trust. So is a private grant. These ought to be regarded as incentives to dramatic excellence, not as an opportunity to fob off shoddy aesthetic goods on the gullible.

T. E. Kalem