He’s Taking It to the Seats

Nearly eight pages of Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations”--220 entries in all--are given to passages from “Hamlet.”

But the line that Thomas F. Bradac deems most important, at least for actors and directors trying to put Shakespeare across on stage, is too plain to have made it onto the list of all-time linguistic hits.

“We’ll hear a play tomorrow,” Hamlet says in Act II, scene two. Planted in the same scene as such immortal Shakespearean sallies as “Use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping?” and “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” it seems like a toss-away, mere exposition.

But Bradac, who has been producing and directing Shakespeare in Orange County for more than 20 years, thinks that making an audience “hear a play,” rather than see a play, is the crux of bringing the Bard to life.

Even in an age of video, Bradac insists that it is through clear hearing that Shakespeare can be made most vivid, immediate, and, on the most basic level, intelligible to audiences 400 years removed from the first playing of “Hamlet.” Enabling the audience to hear and absorb the words rather than merely watch the action is his mission in directing the Shakespeare Orange County production of “Hamlet” that opens tonight.

Bradac, the company’s founding artistic director and president of the Shakespeare Theater Assn. of America, thinks the oldest approaches give the best cues when it comes to staging the Bard. He is suspicious of overlaying the script with modern psychological concepts or production special effects.

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Have no fear, there will be action in this “Hamlet.” Graves will be leaped into, rapiers drawn and bodies strewn in the end as Horatio bids his sweet prince good night. But, in what Bradac says is a throwback to the original Elizabethan stage practice, the actors will spend a good deal of time--as much as 40%--speaking their lines directly to the audience, rather than to each other as would be the norm in modern plays steeped in stage realism.

“If you look at woodcut illustrations from the time, the actors are all talking out [to the crowd], they’re not talking to each other,” Bradac said. The idea is not just to promote clear hearing of the language, Bradac says, but to have the actors look the crowd in the eyes, connect, and draw them into the drama.

This is Bradac’s third try with “Hamlet.” In 1984 he was the producer but not the director, of a Grove Shakespeare staging he feels went aground on the shoals of modern psychologizing.

“There were some assumptions I felt were wrong--for instance, [portraying Hamlet as] not loving Ophelia. If you do that, you make him soulless.”

Bradac directed “Hamlet” for Shakespeare Orange County in 1992; he is returning to it now--the first play the company has repeated--because this is the troupe’s 10th season and the 400th anniversary of a play scholars believe was written in 1600 or 1601.

Bradac has a bone to pick with Sir Laurence Olivier, who famously cast his 1948 film of “Hamlet” as a play “about a man who couldn’t make up his mind” and gave us a Hamlet with some pronounced Oedipal issues with his mother, Queen Gertrude.

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Freud and Shakespeare don’t mix, in Bradac’s opinion. “There was no concept of psychology in the 17th century, just a concept of human nature. Shakespeare pretty much said what he meant.” And in “Hamlet,” Bradac thinks it is clear that Shakespeare was writing “about the consequences of taking action,” and not about a prince who is indecisive, insane, suicidal or sexually hung up on mom.

A lot of “bells and whistles” Shakespeare is motivated by an urge to make plays fresh or relevant to modern audiences, Bradac said. Though placing his bet on the language itself to reverberate still, he is not a pure traditionalist. To keep the show at no more than three hours, he has cut the political and military backdrop--the Fortinbras stuff--that can stretch an uncut production of “Hamlet” to more than four hours. Last fall, as head of the theater program at Chapman University, he directed a student production of Hamlet that had a futuristic motif: lots of metal in the stage design, and characters wielding Palm Pilots.

The Shakespeare Orange County “Hamlet” is set in modern dress. Claudius wears a business suit; Hamlet and Ophelia will wear “things you might see at the mall.”

“Here’s a kid coming back from college; his father’s dead, his mother’s married his uncle. Then his father’s ghost shows up” to recount a tale of murder and command his son to exact vengeance. “He has to figure out how to deal with it.”

The show’s Hamlet and Ophelia, Nathaniel Justiniano and Hillary Bauman, are recent Chapman graduates in their early 20s. They will join three core veterans of the company: Carl Reggiardo (Claudius), Elizabeth Taheri (Gertrude) and Michael Nehring (Polonius).

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Having a young Hamlet is justified by the text, Bradac says--this is most certainly a student Prince--and helps bring the play closer to young audiences. He doesn’t want Hamlet to seem “an untouchable icon” who lives only in the pages of great literature, but “a kid-who-goes-to-Stanford type of person. They’re people like us.”

But they certainly don’t talk like us. That’s why Bradac says a keen focus on the words is vital to communicate the essence of Shakespeare. He takes satisfaction from a recurring comment he has heard over the years about his ear-first approach:

“People walk away saying, ‘For the first time, I’ve understood the play.’ ”

* “Hamlet,” Shakespeare Orange County, Waltmar Theater on the Chapman University campus at Palm Avenue and Center Street. Opens tonight. Continues Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends July 14. $23 to $25. (714) 744-7016.