Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

The Play's the Thing

The gifted actors of Shakespeare and Company call Lenox, Massachusetts, home. But, like the Bard himself, they take their show on the road. The company’s national tour of Hamlet offers a polished, postmodern take on the famous tragedy. Yes, the plot’s familiar: Hamlet’s uncle kills his father and marries his mother to usurp Denmark’s throne; cue angry dithering. Inventive casting and framing freshen up the 400-year-old opus: Actor Jason Asprey (pictured) plays the mad and moody Dane, and Tina Packer, the troupe’s artistic director and Asprey’s offstage mother, is Queen Gertrude. (Asprey’s dad — Dennis Krausnick — plays Polonius.) Don’t be surprised by sudden lights and noises heralding flashbacks: Director Eleanor Holdridge sets the show “in the electrical synapse pulses of Hamlet’s dying brain.” How’s that for a meditation on memory?