'Fortinbras'
By Don Shirley
Lee Blessing’s jaunty sequel to Hamlet charts the reign of the titular Norwegian prince (Greg Baglia) who enters at Shakespeare’s final curtain. Rejecting Horatio’s explanation of the recent mass murder, he concocts the idea that a Polish spy was the culprit and soon finds himself at war with Poland and a chain of neighboring countries. Meanwhile, the ghosts of the dead – including Hamlet himself (Brian Turley) and a sexually insatiable Ophelia (Dagney Kerr) – return to needle the new ruler, who displays an array of George W. Bush-like traits, even though Blessing wrote the play long before the reign of W. For this play about political spin, Maria Cominis’s staging for Theatre Neo keeps a half-dozen satirical balls spinning at once in a debonair display of comic timing at its sharpest.
Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, (323) 769-5858. Theatreneo.com. Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sun. at 2 p.m. Closes May 3.
Published: 04/23/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
