The StarPhoenix reviewed the 2024 Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan main stage shows, Hamlet and Done/Undone.
The StarPhoenix reviewed the main stage shows at this year’s Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan festival, which runs until Aug. 25. This year’s season features Hamlet and Done/Undone on the main stage, as well as shows like JULIET: A Revenge Comedy and six short works in the Players’ Series, taking to the SOTS community stage throughout the summer.
HAMLET
Spoiler alert: Everybody dies.
It is a Shakespearean tragedy, after all.
Within an elegant, innovative set, this Hamlet exists at the juncture between the urgent push to celebrate and ‘move on’ from the recent horrors of war and pandemic, and the associated traumas left in their aftermath. The result is glitter on an open wound, and it is devastatingly effective.
In the demanding title role, Praneet Akilla is razor-sharp, slicing through every scene with deadly precision. His performance is matched point-for-point by a powerhouse cast including Mara Teare as Ophelia, Kody Farrow as Laertes, Skye Brandon as Claudius, Kevin Williamson as Polonius and Bongani Musa as Horatio.
As Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the duo of Philippa Williams and Grahame Kent offer a much-needed contrast to the tragedy all around them. Their performances elevate an often-understated aspect of Hamlet: It’s actually a very funny, laugh-out-loud kind of play … right up until the comedy crashes into the rest of the plot.
Bringing the music of the 1920s to life on stage, Kristel Harder as Marcellus is incandescent. The songs add an extra artistic flourish to the setting while delicately interweaving with the plot, making Harder a cabaret star and an oracle all in one.
Hamlet is a long play, yes — a full afternoon or evening of theatre — but under the tent, the time flies.
This is world-class Shakespeare in our own backyard.
DONE/UNDONE
As Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan sets its sights on its 40th season next summer, the company isn’t just grappling with hard questions about how, when and why to perform Shakespeare’s works; it puts those questions quite literally on centre stage, with the world premiere production of Kate Besworth’s Done/Undone.
In a 90-minute series of vignettes, Besworth’s script wrestles with Shakespeare and the culture around his work from dozens of different angles.
Maybe, Besworth argues, Shakespeare is all of the above and more.
Though Done/Undone is an unusual SOTS main stage show, the actors tackle each scene with their typical aplomb — even as the show jumps between mundane conversations that might be heard backstage at any theatre, intense academic debates, and some truly wonderful on-stage weirdness.
Veteran SOTS actor Lisa Bayliss portrays Shakespeare himself with a poetic ferocity, showcasing her gift for monologues and leaving the audience hanging on every word.
As a pair of chaotic, cymbal-crashing German automatons dissecting the themes of Shakespeare’s work, Philippa Williams and Kevin Williamson had their work cut out for them and met the challenge head-on, bringing something new and revelatory to the stage with intense, physical performances.
Mara Teare and Chris Krug shine especially bright in a pair of gutting, dynamic, revelatory monologues — though the monologues themselves seemed to be less about Shakespeare specifically, and more about the value of theatre and the work of the theatre industry as a whole.
The questions at the heart of Done/Undone are undeniably important, especially for a Shakespeare company, and the audience that keeps coming back to see each summer’s shows.
But in too many of its own vignettes, Done/Undone seems stuck at the starting block, offering glimpses into a university-like symposium about different perspectives on Shakespeare rather than a theatrical reckoning in its own right.
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