Audiences may never see a more beautifully designed production than the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Hamnet,” now at American Conservatory Theater.
This is the third iteration of British writer Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel in which a young Shakespeare falls in love with and marries the bewitching (and witchy) Agnes, known as Anne Hathaway, and in which his young son Hamnet (or Hamlet) dies, excruciatingly, from an illness.
The second iteration was the recent movie, in which Agnes was memorably portrayed by Jessie Buckley.
In this version adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti and directed by Erica Whyman, Kemi-Bo Jacobs is every inch up to Buckley’s standard as she leads an excellent 14-member cast of British actors. Some play multiple roles quite effectively (hats off especially to Nigel Barrett as both Will’s relentlessly abusive father and one of Will’s actors — a jolly, dim-witted one — at the Globe).
Novelist O’Farrell’s focus was not on the Bard (played by a gangly and sympathetic Rory Alexander), but on the wild woman Agnes, left to manage the Stratford household on her own as her husband carves a career for himself in London.
It’s a story that, over the course of two and a half hours with intermission, interweaves Agnes’ life at home (when she meets Will, when she gives birth — the first time it’s on her own, out in a field — and years later when she’s mothering her three kids and facing tragedy) and comic scenes of Will as actor-playwright on the verge of fame and fortune in London.
Those interweaving scenes of birth, and of tragedy in Act 2, are effectively dramatic.
But what stands out most are the design elements. Tom Piper’s scenic design, a towering, skeletal but complex edifice, calls to mind Shakespeare’s Wooden O, complete with ladders that magically seem to appear and disappear, alongside props and structures such as tables and beds. Piper’s appropriately downscale period costumes are appropriately downscale.
Whyman’s tight, choreographic staging keeps the actors swiftly, gracefully, moving set pieces from scene to scene.
There’s a vivid visual imagination at work: Agnes becomes pregnant simply by being wrapped in a white cloth; a tied sheet transforms a dead body into a corpse; the ways Will’s vicious father beats him up — are almost dancerly.
Overall, the visuals — the way that props, the stage picture and the blocking meld together — are stunning. So is Simon Baker’s sound design that begins with a foreboding, echoey score by Oğuz Kaplangi that effectively enhances the play’s various moods.
And, in Chakrabarti’s adaptation, some of the dialogue zings. “She’s like fire and water all at once,” says a smitten Will after he meets Agnes. Later the budding playwright explains, “I write what I cannot say,” and in an affecting monologue describes his struggle to write.
What’s not so effective: The story zooms through many years, switches from Stratford to London, from rage to ecstasy, at such a pace that a few silent moments in the death scene feel like a blessed relief from the histrionics. As a story about the preternaturally independent, nature-loving Agnes and the death of her son, it’s so theatrical as to be emotionally distancing at the same time as it heightens audiences’ aesthetic sensibilities.
Nevertheless, the sublime artistry of this visually and aurally dazzling show will impress fans of the book and/or movie, as well as those new to the story.
Royal Shakespeare Company and Neal Street Productions’ “Hamnet” is onstage through May 24 at American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25 to $130 at www.act-sf.org.
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