Excerpts from the reviews
“Sheridan Crist transcends his dull surroundings with an enlivening display of fire, intensity, and chameleon-like shifts. Deranged he’s not; only wildly impulsive, mischievously playful, explosive and just a bit spaced out . . . Note that T. Ryder Smith is a good replacement as Laertes . . . “ – Alvin Klein, The New York Times
“This uncut version runs almost 4 hours. Prepare for a long – but as it turns out swift-moving – evening. The rewards are compelling performances and the rare chance to see the entire play.“ – Jean Ogden, Courier News
“A speedy but often unstable production . . . but we are swept along by the cumulative tide of events. You don’t have to be a Bardolator to enjoy ‘Hamlet’. You don’t even have to wait for the perfect production. You can be content, as I am, with a ghost of a Hamlet.“ – Simon Salzman, Bergen Daily Record
The Show Must Go On
I received my Equity card with this production, and in the classic “Quick! You’re going on!” way.
Actor’s Equity Association is the professional actor’s union – called “Equity” for short – and to “earn one’s card” is to achieve full union status. On rare occasions an actor is simply given their Equity card by a producer for a specific project, but usually one earns it by accumulating “points”: performing as a non-Equity member of a professional Equity company, earning one point for each week of work, up to the qualifying 40 or so points. In some thriving acting communities – Chicago’s, for instance – membership in Equity is not essential, but in NY it is generally necessary, and coveted. And so, as a late-starting actor, I was very happy to have been cast in the non-Equity company of the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival’s 1988 season, with the prospect of continuing to earn points toward my card. I had small roles in each of the rep’s 4 shows, and a few good understudy parts, including Laertes in “Hamlet”. I knew I would go on in the role at least once – in a scheduled special matinee performed entirely by the understudies – and set about making sure I was ready.
Our director Paul Barry ran and had helped found the Festival, which was exceptional for several reasons: the length of it’s season – 5 months – the fact that it performed true repertory – 4 shows in nightly rotation – and that it presented the shows without any cuts to the text. Pretty much every theatre cut Shakespeare’s scripts to some extent, but Paul said the man knew what he was doing, and that the plays were exactly as long as they were supposed to be. Which meant that we wound up with a 4 hour “Hamlet”, all of it’s usually-jettisoned subplots intact. It was deeply rewarding to get to analyze and rehearse the true epic breadth of the show, and a bracing challenge to put it up, but it placed enormous demands on the lead actor. Alan Jordan was our Hamlet, and had light or no assignments in the other shows in the rep to compensate for his heavy load as the Prince. His understudy was Sheridan Crist, the actor in the Equity company who played Laertes.
While we were getting “Hamlet” into final production, Sheridan was in rehearsal with the next show in the rep, “Two Gentleman of Verona”, playing the lead role of Valentine. And it was around this same time that the understudy matinee of “Hamlet” occurred. Which meant that Sheridan had to not only hold in his memory the roles of Laertes and Valentine, but also the full text of “Hamlet”. How he managed all that without his brain bursting into flame is anyone’s guess, but Sheridan was a trouper. The “Hamlet” matinee went well, and we all turned our focus to the opening of “Two Gentleman”.
Alan Jordan was performing superbly as Hamlet, and taking good care of himself for the long season ahead, and yet one night his distress in the climactic swordfight seemed a little too realistic. “It’s nothing”, he mumbled as he hobbled through the curtain call, favoring one leg – “Just a twinge in the calf”, he said, as he hop-walked to the dressing room – “No problem!” he called back as he limped to his nearby apartment after the show. And after a couple of days rest, he bravely showed up and got through the next performance in the rotation of shows, but was clearly in pain with what seemed a torn muscle in one leg. In the show following that one, he had occasional need of a cane, and in the one after that, judicious use of a literal crutch. Director Paul Barry was pleading with him to see a specialist, but Alan knew we still had another show to rehearse after “Two Gents” and he wanted to try to hold out until the full rep was up.
It sometimes seems odd to people outside the theatre, but there is a fierce drive in actors to push through even alarming injury and illness rather than miss a performance. “The show must go on” is a cliche because we mean it.
So “Two Gents” opened, and the full company was called for a meeting the next day prior to the matinee performance of “Hamlet” – to be chastised for the opening night party getting a bit rambunctious, we thought – but Paul announced that he had just been told that Alan’s doctor was forbidding him to perform that day, so the understudies were going on. It was 12 noon. The show was at 2.
Consternation.
Any shift like that in a large company radiates out, since the understudies of the understudies then need to take over their roles, as do the understudies to the understudies of the understudies, etc. Hence the theatre was buzzing with activity in that hour before the show – another cliche come to life – with scenes being rehearsed, blocking reviewed, costumes altered, etc. People found space wherever they could – in hallways, dressing-rooms, stairwells, the lobby. Actors kept trying to get into the theatre to rehearse, but Paul was working alone there with Sheridan.
I ran through my scenes with Ophelia and Polonius out on the theatre lawn, dashed to the costume shop to get the Laertes costume quickly pinned and tucked to fit me, and went over the swordfight choreography with the fight captain in the dressing-room hallway. I then stuck my head in the back door of the theatre, to see if Sheridan might have a moment to touch base, and saw him sitting despondently on the stage, with Paul pacing grimly nearby. Paul immediately noticed me in the doorway. He barked “You ready?”. “Yes!”, I blurted, hoping it was true. “Break a leg”, he said, trying not to wince at the irony. I left him and Sheridan to their business.
The performance went fine all around, albeit with a new prop for Hamlet – a small leather notebook, which the Prince jotted in and read from incessantly. It turned out to be – secretly – a copy of the actual play. Sheridan, after his remarkable feat of memorization a few weeks prior, had concentrated on “Two Gentleman” and on his role in the upcoming “All’s Well That Ends Well” to the extent that – he feared – he’d let the uncut “Hamlet” slip a bit from his memory. When I had peeked in at him and Paul, they were despairingly discussing options. There was no question of canceling the show, no time to rehearse, and neither of them wanted to have to keep calling to the prompter for a forgotten line. Paul looked at the worn paperback copy of the play Sheridan was holding in his lap, and suddenly called the prop-master to the stage. “Bind that in leather”, he said, “and find an Elizabethan pencil”. So for the next couple of shows, Hamlet “took notes” during his scenes, while actually sneaking a glance at the text when his memory faltered. His memory actually worked quite well, and Sheridan literally, and elegantly, tossed away the notebook mid-show his third time out, and didn’t use it again.
Brave Alan’s injury turned out to be bad enough to force him to reluctantly leave the company, and Sheridan and I stayed in the roles until the finish of the season. Which got me just 2 points shy of qualifying for my Equity card. But Paul, whose crusty exterior masked great generosity, passed me on the theatre lawn one afternoon and asked if I had plans immediately following the rep season. I said no, and he said “Then you’re cast”, meaning in the first show of the fall season, Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten”. Which meant that by the time we opened that show, I would “get my card”, and be a full member of the union.
My deep gratitude to him remains undimmed.
Context
I was and am an avid gardener wherever I find opportunity to be, and knew that Ophelia famously distributes some flowers in Hamlet. I asked director Paul Barry if his concept for the show included literal flowers and he said yes, and so I asked if I might grow them in a small patch of the theatre lawn, so that they were real and fresh each night. He was surprised and a bit doubtful but did give me permission. I built a small raised bed and planted all the flowers and herbs mentioned in Ophelia’s bouquet – rosemary, pansies, fennel, rue, columbines, daisies – as well as a few other things for show or for company members to use to cook with. I enjoyed picking the plants for the performances and delivering them to the actress playing Ophelia each night, but eventually she gathered them herself, during the show, just prior to her scene. As the season went on, it was tricky to keep the flowers constantly in bloom, but we managed. I returned to the festival for the next two years and kept the garden going and was told it even survived a few years after I was gone, some of the plants self-seeding. But the rue took over, as it will, and the lawn where the bed sat was re-landscaped. But it was a great pleasure to do it, and for that season of Hamlet the little garden had something of an enchanted quality to it.
