Lee Blessing’s play begins with an expiring Prince (or, by then, King) Hamlet cradled in the arms of his best friend Horatio and waxing lyrical about how the potent poison o’ercrows his spirit, and turns all that follows into silence.
And then Fortinbras shows up.
Of all the many enigmas in ” Hamlet,” the Prince of Norway is among the most fascinating, in that he feels like a combination of invader, peacemaker and garbage collector. Watch the end of the Shakespearean play, and you cannot help wonder how on earth Fortinbras will be able to clean up all those bodies and sort out this impossibly sudden Freudian jumble of murder and ruin.
Similar questions haunt the end of any classic drama. Will Biff Loman get on with his mother now? Can Oedipus learn to live with blindness? Will the boys in ” The Full Monty” take their clothes off once too often for their own good? But because we’re conditioned to accept a climax and move on to the next play, these fascinating questions don’t usually get explored outside of the cheap Hollywood sequel.
Blessing’s frequently revived ” Fortinbras,” which is being presented in Chicago by the Defiant Theatre, is a largely comic sequel to ” Hamlet.” This allows for much amusement — the ghost of Ophelia shows up and someone tries to sell off a slightly damaged arras — but Blessing also wanted to make some deeper comments about the importance of truth and the dangers of scared, manipulative leaders. As a result, the play is a hybrid of Stoppardian parody and serious politicized fare, and it never lived up to the promise of its idea, even when it had the benefit of novelty.
Under newcomer Justin Fletcher’s very promising direction, Defiant’s well-crafted production is exceptionally well-acted and avoids most of the campy traps of this material. Jason Kae is smart, arresting and credible in the title role, and there’s strong support from John Harrell as buddy Horatio and the very amusing Katherine Martinez Ripley as a supernatural (aren’t they all?) Ophelia.
But you have to wonder why Defiant is doing a play that seems so far from its mission. We expect newer — or at least powerfully re-imagined — material from this edgy troupe. And while there are a couple of classic Defiant touches in “Fortinbras” (most notably, the droll face of a dead Hamlet on a video monitor), the creativity of this troupe feels generally hemmed in by what’s now an aging script and a familiar play that doesn’t fit what this troupe does best.
This is a common mistake when Chicago companies lose sight of their niche. Given its proven history of quality and risk-taking, Defiant needs to stick to the defiant.
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Defiant Theatre presents ” Fortinbras” at The Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave. through Oct. 20. $15 to $20. 312-409-0585.
