In the centuries since William Shakespeare put quill to paper and wrote “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” in 1602, or thereabout, we have met all sorts of Hamlets, seen all manner of versions of the play.
We have encountered Hamlet in such actors as Sarah Bernhardt and Daniel Day-Lewis, Laurence Olivier and Mel Gibson, John Wilkes Booth and Richard Burton. Quite a crowd.
We have seen “Hamlet” on stages, in movies, in parks. Some of us (myself included) vividly remember the 1985 Wisdom Bridge Theater production directed by Bob Falls (soon to move on to lead the Goodman Theater) and starring a 26-year-old Aidan Quinn, who spray-painted the words “To Be / Not to Be” before turning to the audience and saying, “that is the question.”
The latest and among the most intriguing, exciting and entertaining is currently available for your listening pleasure and, frankly, your amazement is “Hamlet,” a Chicago-spawned six-part podcast series.
Jeremy McCarter, who calls “Hamlet” the most famous play ever written, has adapted and directed the play in collaboration with dozens of others, most crucially sound designer Mikhail Fiksel.
“The idea came to me two years ago,” McCarter says. “We all have this super power when wearing headphones, the ability to let sound take us inside the head to a character. And I thought, ‘Now, who has the most interesting head?’ Hamlet came quickly to me.”
The final result did not.
“It was a challenge and there were many scary moments,” McCarter says. “We wanted to be inside Hamlet’s head, hearing all he would be hearing. But the words had to remain all Shakespeare’s. It was important to get the approval of some scholars (such as James Shapiro). I didn’t want the Shakespeare police coming after me. … But we carried on, and in two years we had it.”
McCarter moved here from Brooklyn in 2014 with his journalist wife and their baby girl. I interviewed him then, and he talked about his Harvard education; helping run New York City’s Public Theater; writing books, including “Hamilton: The Revolution,” with good friend Lin-Manuel Miranda; and recently becoming the literary executor of the novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder.
In 2017, he founded and is the executive producer of the Make-Believe Association, a nonprofit audio production company. “Hamlet” is available free on all major podcast streaming platforms, but I would urge you to listen to (or at least visit) makebelieve.fm. It will give you a fuller vision of his mission, which is to “create a community of artists and audiences who believe that telling stories together, and talking about what they mean, creates a more vibrant democracy,” with an emphasis on local talents. You will also be able to hear previous productions, such as “City On Fire: Chicago Race Riot 1919.”
“Hamlet” stars 30-year-old Daniel Kyri, a native Chicagoan and familiar presence on local stages. He has been Hamlet before, in an acclaimed 2019 performance at the Gift Theatre, with Tribune critic Chris Jones calling Kyri an “exceptional young Chicago talent … a distinguished young ‘Hamlet.’” He called the performance “honest, vulnerable enough, sufficiently complicated and, most important of all, walks its own walk.”
“I had worked with Daniel before on a project and so, of course, I saw him as Hamlet at Gift,” McCarter says. “I was mesmerized by his performance and knew he was right for this project.”
Kyri wasn’t immediately sold.
“But finally, I became eager to get another crack at the character. I knew I was ready to tackle it again,” Kyri said. “I think we are able to give the audience the ability to see into Hamlet’s soul.”
Even McCarter was anxious, saying, “This really did start as an experiment. It took a while before we knew it was going to work.”
The work was done at Tightrope Recording on the North Side. Kyri would often arrive fresh from the filming of “Chicago Fire,” the locally shot NBC show on which he has been a regular cast member since 2018. It was announced earlier this year that he would be leaving due to budgetary reasons.
“But I am happy to tell you that things have changed and I will be coming back next season,” he told me. “It is great for any actor to get a steady paycheck and when I was first cast on the show, it was so affirming for me as an actor.”
It is beyond my caveman-like knowledge to detail all of the technological wizardry involved in this production. Sound designer Fiksel employs what is called the binaural method and all sorts of audio technological tools.
The podcast premiered in June at the Tribeca Festival in New York City to rave reviews, one critic writing that it was “a fastidious and entertaining reworking of the script. But it only gels into transportive immersion thanks to Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design.”
Since that premiere, McCarter, frequently with Kyri, has been spreading the word. Toward that end, he wrote a provocative essay in the New York Times, saying that the “similarities between Shakespeare’s bewildered, semi-deranged prince and his audience — all of us — have rarely been clearer than they are today.”
That, of course, is for you to decide, but I will tell you that this is one powerful podcast. I had long thought Hamlet, during and after many encounters, was kind of a confused, lonely and vengeful young prince. That view has been altered by this new “Hamlet.” Spending time “in Hamlet’s head,” as McCarter puts it, is an intimate and ultimately enlightening experience. I now find Hamlet a searcher, damaged, yes, but determined, isolated, but still curious.
And, as I was pleasantly reminded, that Shakespeare guy sure could write.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
