Theater review: ‘God Save Gertrude’ at The Theatre @ Boston Court
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Elsinore meets the Masque in ‘God Save Gertrude,’ now at The Theatre @ Boston Court. Deborah Stein and David Hanbury’s play with music is a punk-rock take on ‘Hamlet’ from the perspective of his beleaguered mother.
As played by Jill Van Velzer with full-throttle commitment, this Gertrude isn’t quite the beauteous majesty of Denmark that tradition dictates. Stein’s scenario occurs in ‘the recent future or an alternative now,’ when revolution is afoot. Barricading herself in a bombed-out theater (surreally designed by Susan Gratch), Gertrude works several realities at once. By turns sarcastic, rhapsodic and pathetic in costumer Soojin Lee’s bedraggled evening gown, Gertrude name-drops, exposits and rails in postmodern manner while reliving past glories of anti-Establishment stardom with her late first husband.
These segments, lyrics by Stein and composer Hanbury, are dynamically effective, recalling ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch.’ Here, as elsewhere, director Michael Michetti makes sharp use of Jason H. Thompson’s space-spanning videos, Rob Oriol’s ominous sound and Steven Young’s spectacular lighting.
Where ‘God Save Gertrude’ goes askew is in a narrative that drowns its most imaginative Shakespearean riffs in generic totalitarian notions. Redrawing Hamlet as a Generation Next icon called Mama’s Boy (Steve Coombs, visually and vocally vivid) is intriguing. Making Claudius a corporatist politico named Man (James Horan, suitably saturnine) approaches cliché. As Ophelia stand-in Daddy’s Girl, the ever-arresting Lily Holleman gives her textually unearned face-off with Gertrude its principal intensity. Ultimately, this nervy experiment needs Polonius, Laertes, Horatio, the ghost and a band, to become the subversive rock musical it screams to be.
-- David C. Nichols
‘God Save Gertrude,’ The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 8. $32. (626) 683-6883. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.