Laurence Olivier never expected his epic version of "Hamlet" to be re-enacted in 10 minutes by a cast of paper dolls.
That, however, is exactly what Ninth Street Theater managed to execute flawlessly with its Travelling Toy Theater Festival in two shows at the Hopkins Center last Saturday.
Along with "Olivier's Hamlet," the company performed a version of Tolstoy's "War and Peace," a fable entitled "The Ash King," a political anti-handgun piece entitled "Terror as Usual, Episode 8: Guns and Roses." The group also showed a super-8 film by Meredith Holch entitled "My Hero."
Ninth Street Theater used the 19th century art of toy theater, which involves the use of paper stages and cutout puppets to enact dramatic pieces.
The Festival opened with "Olivier's Hamlet," written by theater members John Bell, Stephen Kaplin, Nessa Rabin and Roberto Rossi, and performed by Bell, Kaplin, Rabin and Michael Romanyshyn.
Two members read the narrative, which consisted of an abridged plot summary of Hamlet interspersed with readings from Olivier's book on acting, while the other two moved the paper puppets.
The dramatic contrast between Olivier's austere opus and the irreverence with which the players reenacted it, punctuated by various egoisms from Olivier's book, made the entire effect hilarious.
They reduced Olivier's fire and passion to a paper cutout: the ghost's voice was projected by speaking through an empty paper-towel roll and Ophelia died by casually being dropped over the side of the toy theater stage.
The next piece, a more serious fairy-tale entitled "The Ash King," was conceived, designed and directed by Janie Geiser with a text by Daniel Zippi.
"The Ash King" recounted the story of a man who became king after saving his country from a drought by creating an irrigation system. To keep the people fearful of his power, he secretly set fire to all the country's farmhouses. Finally it is the children of the kingdom who chase him out with hoses from his own irrigation system.
"The Ash King" was fine as a fairy-tale, but contained little of the stark humor that made "Hamlet" and "War and Peace" so captivating. The narrator of "The Ash King" was a child's voice, which contributed to the haunting feeling created by the dark, mostly colorless toy theater set.
The third presentation was Tolstoy's "War and Peace," written by Michael and Victor Romanyshyn, and performed by Michael Romanyshyn, Susan Dennison and Jenny Romaine.
Ninth Street's adaptation of the dialogue was read with a purposeful melodrama which made the piece especially noteworthy. The irreverence to a great opus, which made the version of "Hamlet" so appealing, worked again here.
When told that his men are jumping into the river to show their love for him, the puppet Napoleon exclaims: "They are drowning! What a bother. Give me my horse. I don't want to watch." The human actors were dressed in Russian gear, complete with fur hats, and seemed to regard their task with the utmost of Siberian severity.
Next came "My Hero," a super-8 film by Meredith Holch. Plastic action figures emerged from under the covers to dance a hilarious ho-down on the bed, only to be sent running by ominous icicles threatening them from outside the window.
The use of stop-frame action to create the illusion of motion, much like claymation, made the whimsical picture all the more fluid and humorous.
The Theater then presented its most political piece, "Terror as Usual, Episode 8: Guns and Roses," written and acted by Bell, Trudi Cohen, Kaplin, Romaine and Mark Sussman. "Guns and Roses" addressed the issue of handguns, reading news bites of slayings and framing pictures of examples of how the media glamorizes violence.
Following the other pieces, the strong anti-gun message seemed strange and out-of-place.
Though the point was to demonstrate the potential flexibility and versatility of toy theater, the piece showed the theater's limitations. It appeared much easier to reduce a masterpiece to 10 minutes than to effectively address a controversial social issue with cutouts and plastic turkeys.
