Get thee to ‘Hamlet’

WHAT a piece of work is “Hamlet”; how noble in reason and infinite in faculties is actor Joseph Fuqua. If the ambitious revival of William Shakespeare’s evergreen tragedy at the Rubicon has its malefactions, Fuqua delivers the royal goods in a performance as expressive as it is spontaneous.

Note the brooding hush at “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,” which Fuqua murmurs with a clipped melancholy. Now, reconcile that with the galvanic rage ignited by his father’s ghost (Leonard Kelly Young), the many valid laughs in unexpected places or the hairpin turns between feigned and real madness. Although his tangled curls and designer Marcy Froehlich’s smashing Empire costumes rather suggest Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy, the dynamic Fuqua seems born for Hamlet, almost Byronic in the confrontations, tellingly confidential in the soliloquies.

These, delivered from the apron of Thomas S. Giamario’s semi-thrust setting, are worth the admission. Using the First Folio edition of the text, with interstitial cuts, director Jenny Sullivan lets her star sculpt his interpretation from inside the lines, and, barring the odd too-stentorian attack, Fuqua doesn’t disappoint.

Nor do James O’Neil, his lucid, guilt-ridden Claudius almost sympathetic, or Remi Sandri, a Laertes both restrained and roiling. Ophelia is one of Shakespeare’s shakiest ingenues, but the unaffected Alison Brie manages a riveting mad scene, and Rudolph Willrich makes a casually wry Polonius, hindered only by the edits.

That is a recurrent liability, for the narrative, placed in the Napoleonic era, produces a lopsided structure and some stylistic variables. Though the opening recalls a Carol Reed film, with potent contributions by lighting designer Jeremy Pivnick and sound designer David Beaudry, the assembled court hovers between respectable public television and dutiful academia.

For example, the agreeably old-fashioned declamation of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as the Player King comes from another Elsinor entirely than the grim vulgarity of Young’s First Clown at the graveyard. Perhaps most taxed among the game cast is Stephanie Zimbalist, her still-gelling Gertrude lacking specifics; Joshua Wolf Coleman’s beautifully spoken but underused Horatio; and Jamie Torcellini and Chris Maslen, a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern without a through-line.

Giamario’s revolving panels are functional but peculiar, distracting against the stone staircases. Word pointing sometimes jars, as when Claudius’ “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go,” which ends the first half, seems aimed at current leaders. The final return of the ghost, complete with maniacal laughter, is wildly misjudged. Yet, if the play’s occasionally less the thing than usual, there is a special providence to Fuqua’s memorable prince.

*

‘Hamlet’

Where: Rubicon Theatre Company at the Laurel, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura

When: 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Ends: May 20

Price: $26 to $49

Contact: (805) 667-2900 or www.rubicontheatre.org

Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes