EAST Interview: Kat Murph of Vertallee Letterpress
Directed by Stephen Mills, this ambitious endeavor could’ve crumbled in less capable hands. Instead, it takes flight. Set to the appropriately unpredictable rhythms of Phillip Glass, Shakespeare’s grace jumps off the page and into the bodies of the dancers, who in turn radiate it out to the stage. Anne Marie Melendez’s Ophelia is not a madwoman taken down by unrequited affections, but a powerful woman struggling to hold a force within her that her position and gender demands she deny. When she’s alone, her dancing, while true to the rigorous fluidity of the form, takes on a fire that gives Ophelia a stronger voice than any cry or scream. The pond, part of Jeffery A. Main and Stephen Mills’ set design, looks so blue and serene, so inviting and shallow, that its beauty breaks your heart. No one is meant to die here, and the deeper Ophelia draws us into the chaos and wonder inside her, the harder it hurts that we know her fate.
In death, she lies not in the ground, but suspended in her coffin dressed in white, elevated above the rest of the characters. Floating was part of her death, but her image and placement give her the quality of an angel, as though the people who misunderstood her so profoundly finally respect her wisdom.
Of course, Hamlet’s father affords no such peace in death, and Toni Tucci’s lighting designs work brilliantly with Mills’ stirring performance to create the effect of a restless spirit. From a luminous floating eye to Mills’ haunting white mask and ethereal way of appearing suddenly at any corner of the stage, the ghost and his longing for revenge is unmistakable.
Christopher McCullum’s costume designs also speak for the characters. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, whose fire and regality Aara Krumpe brings beautifully to life, wears a red velvet dress throughout the second act. Only when she dons black velvet for Ophelia’s funeral does it fully sink in that she has not bothered to mourn her husband before yielding to his brother Claudius’ desires. Hamlet’s black clothes, which effectively mark his grieving amidst contented, brightly-clad people in the opening scene, set the key for a complicated tone that Paul Michael Bloodgood succeeds in executing.
What made this tale of madness, suicide, and revenge so suitable for Valentine’s Day? The production, above all else, was a celebration of the human body: its ability to communicate, to ignite and express emotion, to transform temporal distance from works of art into visceral experiences. We’re not all ballet dancers, but we all have bodies. There is more possibility in that alone than we often let ourselves believe.
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