Scarlett Fever
Maureen Johnson
For Agnetha F?ltskog, Benny Andersson, Bj?rn Ulvaeus, and Her Serene Highness Anni Frid, Princess Reuss von Plauen.
ACT I
Gothammag.com
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”: Hamlet at the Hopewell Hotel So let’s set the scene, shall we? Hamlet. In a hotel. But not one of the grand palaces or tourist farms—a much rarer breed. A tiny, privately owned hotel. It would be fair, and possibly even generous, to call the place distressed. The floors squeak, a fine layer of dust covers everything, and most of the furniture in the lobby has an astonishing lean to it, so much so that I actually found myself cocking my head to the side at points.
But what is equally obvious is the true style under the decay. It’s there, like good bone structure. The place is an absolute Deco masterpiece: cherry wood, silver lightning-bolt motifs where you least expect them, poison-purple and tiger lily–orange tinted light from the colored lamps. You pass from the lobby into a modest dining room, now converted into a theater. Like everything else, the chandelier is lopsided, but deliberately so, pulled by a wire draped with silver gauze. The walls are bare but alive with the shadows of a hundred small, guttering candles. The room is in decadent disarray, as if a seedy royal wedding has taken place soon before.
Which, of course, it has. Welcome to the world of Hamlet.
Full disclosure: I wanted to dismiss this production as a gimmick, a cheap bag of tricks. Hamlet in a hotel…and next, Othello in an office. Macbeth in a McDonald’s. I’ve seen shows staged in every possible location, but the fact that this one seemed so tied to the establishment—with backstage access to guests—I assumed it was a new step downward in the ever-devolving state of the art.
But this show works. I now think every production of Hamlet should be staged in a broken-down hotel. This is the play where people constantly come and go—royals, courtiers, messengers, servants, students, performers—and events progress from bad to worse to terminal. All is uprooted in Hamlet, no one is sleeping in the right bed, and your stay may be much shorter than you expect. So a hotel…of course! Why not?
This Hamlet is also staged like a kind of carnival—a mad, strange circus. It’s an uneven production, overacted at points (Stephanie Damler doesn’t quite know where to pull back on Ophelia’s insanity, and Jeffery Archson’s portrayal of Horatio set my teeth on edge). But there are some true laugh-out-loud moments, mostly provided by the inspired clowning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, played by Eric Hall and Spencer Martin, respectively. In particular, when Martin careened through the crowd on his unicycle at the start of the show and had an encounter with a closed door—I actually spit-took my drink onto my companion’s shoulder. And I’m not normally a spitter.
Like all good things, it will come to an end, so get your tickets while you can. (SHOW CLOSES AUGUST 28, TICKETS AVAILABLE THROUGH TICKETPRO OR FREE TO HOTEL GUESTS.)
Demo version limitation
RUE IS FOR REMEMBRANCE
After a few hours of fitful midmorning sleep, Scarlett made a second attack on the day and headed for the shower. It always took a moment for the Hopewell water pipes to figure out what temperature you wanted. The default setting was “death by ice or fire.” Scarlett didn’t care at the moment. She would take what came, and what came was cold. Bitter, impossible cold that almost felt good in the heat. She locked her teeth together and accepted it, letting it run down her back. As she reached for her shampoo, she got dangerously close to singing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair,” a song she learned when Spencer was doing South Pacific in high school. She stopped herself just as she opened her mouth. New start or not, there was a line to be drawn, and that line was singing musicals to yourself as serious psychological motivation.
Downstairs, the lobby was empty of people. There were a few guests still staying at the Hopewell, but the numbers were coming down dramatically now that the show was closed and the novelty of the theater-hotel was over. The dining room doors were open, and her father was up on a ladder on the stage platform, unhooking a wire and a silver banner from the tired chandelier.
“I’m going to meet Dakota,” she called.