Theater Review : Robert Wilson in a Solo Spin on ‘Hamlet’

The promise of Robert Wilson starring in a solo riff on Shakespeare’s most renowned work sets off all kinds of responses. First, you have to laugh (one-man “Hamlet,” yeah, right). Then, you get curious (Wilson talks, too?). In the end, it begins to make sense.

For many, “Hamlet” has always been a monologue, a mighty soliloquy for a Danish prince interrupted by extraneous royals and spear-carriers bent on keeping him from the activity of inactivity.

“Hamlet, a Monologue,” the auspicious opener for this year’s Serious Fun! festival at Lincoln Center, satisfies thrill-seekers at the latest Hamlet triathlon as it coddles fans of Wilson’s light-show theatrics. The former will note that Wilson’s Hamlet--predictably deliberate in pace and fond of repetition--contrasts favorably with Ralph Fiennes’ hundred-yard dash.

The biggest revelation, however, may be for longtime detractors who have been put off by a coldness in the Wilson style. Forsaking his usual catatonic dream-speak in favor of Shakespeare’s smoldering text, the maverick director-designer has fashioned a deeply felt work that shrinks the gap between Wilson the compassionate private individual and Wilson the dispassionate artist.

“Hamlet, a Monologue” is an expressionistic foray into the prince’s mind moments before dying. Dressed in an evocative black tunic, Wilson is discovered reclining above a horizontal pile of flat rocks that diminish in number until the final scene, when the stage is strewn with the costumes of Hamlet’s many victims. Occasionally, a stark white backdrop erupts into voluptuous blasts of color--hot flashes from Hamlet’s troubled psyche, perhaps--then the whole setting is hidden by a black scrim, presumably so stagehands can drag away another rock.

Wilson is specially attuned to the character’s madness, perhaps due to his own history attending to autistic and brain-damaged children. Aided by co-adapter Wolfgang Wiens, he excerpts and reorders interior monologues and pivotal encounters to point up the disturbing ambiguity of Hamlet’s antic disposition. Wilson’s readings, which run a delirious gamut of acting styles from cinema-subtle to Victorian bombast, further blur the distinction between real and artificial madness. Fascinatingly, the artist manages to infuse his emblematic distancing techniques with a genuine empathy: Who else could sell “To be or not to be” lying on his back or “What a piece of work is man” with a cloak over his head?

Repetition, that beloved Wilsonian tool, seems perfectly at home in this context. At times, Wilson will deliver a passage full-tilt (“Speak, I charge thee speak”), then repeat it with the life drained out to give us the sense of a man coming apart at the seams. At other times, the multiple inflections (“Mother, you have my father most offended”) create the droll--not to say appropriate--impression of an actor preparing to audition for a role with only one line.

Wilson cues us into Hamlet’s growing disorientation through an innovative, split-personality score by Hans Peter Kuhn, who surrounds the audience in spacey, sometimes ear-splitting, sound effects and serenades Hamlet with banjo-and-tuba goofs or mock Elizabethan-style ditties. The music does weird things to Wilson, who breaks into funny little dances and stripteases at the toss of a hat. The whole piece, in less pronounced ways, is choreographed within an inch of its life. Wilson keeps apace with his own steps so gracefully, we don’t much mind the fact that, at 54, the artist really ought to be contemplating “King Lear, a Monologue” instead.