I returned to Bard on the Beach’s Hamlet to see Chirag Naik in the title role. (In a scheduled change, he has taken over from Nadeem Phillip Umar Khitab.)
The news isn’t good. Naik overacts, and that exacerbates an underlying problem with director Stephen Drover’s production.
In my original, generally enthusiastic review, which I wrote after seeing Khitab in the role, I said that, until the interval, I thoroughly enjoyed Drover’s driving interpretation but that, after the break, the lack of introspection started to take its toll on the text. With Naik in the role, almost all of Hamlet’s throughline is wonky.
Although the actor settles into greater credibility in the prince’s scenes with the ghost of his father, Naik hits almost everything else at a high, artificial pitch. This approach does the most damage when, later in the story, Hamlet is feigning madness. If Hamlet is both faking lunacy and suffering real disequilibrium, teetering on the brink of existential collapse, the play has the potential for tremendous complexity. But, with Naik, Hamlet’s nuttiness is so deliberately showy that it becomes cartoon-like and much of the script’s potential is lost. To be fair, Drover’s interpretation has always emphasized dramatic clarity rather than emotional and philosophical subtlety; Naik’s broad interpretation has worsened the downside of this approach.
Many of the production’s strengths remain intact: the heartbreaking set-up of Ophelia’s dilemma, the spookiness of the Ghost scenes, Matthew Ip Shaw’s steady performance as Horatio.
But the centre isn’t holding.
HAMLET by William Shakespeare. Directed by Steven Drover. On Sunday, September 8. A Bard on the Beach production running in rep on the BMO Mainstage until September 20. Tickets and information
PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Chirag Naik by Emily Cooper
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