The performances of fiery Frankie J. Alvarez as Hamlet and Douglas Jones as both a pompous Polonius and definitively comic Gravedigger would alone make Hamlet, Prince of Cuba worth watching and hearing. Not that this version of Hamletis a gimmick. It’s a much-edited adaptation of Shakespeare’s play to a different time (late1890s) and place (Cuba) with accommodations to cultural differences.
Asolo publicity tells us that changes were partly inspired by the historical militant and political challenges led by Jose Martí and Asolo’s present desire to break the “disconnect between the Anglo and the Latino Communities” and to “help bridge our reality right now” in Miami and Sarasota. In reality, Miami may be almost a Cuban city. But Sarasota-area Latinos are overwhelmingly of Mexican origin, and about as many others come from Peru and Brazil as from Cuba.
If the “disconnect” is basically linguistic, though, should the Spanish of translator Nilo Cruz avoid regional differences such as the Canarian Spanish of Cuba or the Caribbean of Central Americans? It probably isn’t Castillian, as in Shakespeare’s time; it definitely isn’t iambic pentameter, which Cruz considers “ornamentation” -- part of most translations’ “academic spectacles.” Instead Cruz lets Hamlet “break from the prism of rhymes to embrace the dark sounds of his restless soul” (strange metaphors) and “to allow his tempestuous lyricism to rise for a Latino audience.”
Asolo aims to have audiences “be simply overwhelmed with the beauty and power” of the play as accessed by the artistry and “intellectual energy” of the actors. Okay.
It’s not clear if they’re all bilingual, doing both the English and Spanish scripts. In the English version, there’s no doubt the actors are mostly more than adequate. Alavarez and Jones don’t miss a note, while lovely Gisela Chipe’s Ophelia plays well the notably difficult responses required of her character. Emilio Delgado’s Claudius is consistently cunning, always referring to “my throne”.
But the production has problems. Most notable: only in the program and publicity are date (see above) and place (Havana) clearly stated. The basic set of outer and inner wall of a building, topped with fans inset and a railing, suggests a somewhat dilapidated “court” in a tropical area. Yet those within wear sumptuous clothing and have the wherewithal for large-scale partying.
The opening shows Hamlet dead down center, so what follows is presumably a flashback. If he can pop up so readily--here to be at his mother’s actual re-wedding, why at the end does he ask us, the audience (not Horatio) to absent ourselves “from felicity awhile” to tell his story (since it’s just been presented). Horatio, by the way, is a part that gets short shift in this version, though Luke Bartholomew does all he can with what’s left. He’s a victim of the numerous cuts and rearrangements of dialogue and action that often seem to go, though not in order, from soliloquy to soliloquy by Hamlet.
An effective choice is for Hamlet to bemoan his “too sullied” rather than “solid” flesh, since it helps explain his erotic and violent treatment of the women. He’s linked to his sexually base mother and to the Ophelia he overhears “unloosed” to him by her father.
A startling, interesting staging is the Ghost’s actually possessing Hamlet, so that he speaks with Alvarez’ strong voice and passion through young Hamlet. After a presumed release, however, his voice still comes through asking Horatio to “Swear!” not to tell what he’s seen and heard. So can we be sure he’s really gone until the scene in Gertrude’s bedroom?
And if the Ghost has the power to possess, why doesn’t he have Hamlet immediately proceed to the revenge against Claudius? Instead, Hamlet proceeds to playing mad, and we next see him on the palace roof in big black-rimmed glasses as almost a caricature of Groucho Marx. By the time he interacts with a silly Polonius and soon after Gertrude and Claudius bring on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (effectively robotic Jake Staley and Jon-Michael Miller), we feel we’re in the realm of tragicomedy.
Various confusions lead to the basic one: The play is here sometimes a construct with its own logic, just as Shakespeare’s takes place in a Danish kingdom that’s really an Elizabethan English one with appropriate rules yet a few departures from beliefs or dictates of the time. (In Protestant England, for example, Purgatory was outlawed so the Ghost would have been either a demon or non-existent, imagined.) In reality Cuba at no time has been a kingdom (but an outpost of the Kingdom of Spain) and thus never had a prince, as in this adaptation. As Catholic, it would have allowed a spirit from Purgatory or a demon from hell but it would not have countenanced a command of revenge from either.
Fortinbras as a character retained could not have been Martí and if he’s the leader of the troops, seen here in a historical film as the Rough Riders, even wearing the uniform at the end, isn’t he Teddy Roosevelt? The adaptor says no. Then who is he -- a Norwegian equestrian upstart stumbling onto the wrong set?
What Hamlet, Prince of Cuba gives us is a confusing hybrid, an almost mixed-genre play that seems to pander to a certain audience. At its best, though, it gives everyone a reason to return to Shakespeare’s text to “tell a hawk from a handsaw” south by southwest, as it were.
