Shakespeare Festival offers an evening of entertainment

The annual Capital Classics festival Greater Hartford Shakespeare Festival has doubled its dose of effervescent Elizabethan entertainment this year by presenting two of the Bard's plays – his greatest tragedy and his most problematic comedy – alternately on the lawn outside the Saint Joseph University in West Hartford.

“Hamlet,” directed by festival co-founder Geoffrey Sheehan, and “Taming of the Shrew,” directed by Jan Mason, will be presented alternately through August 4.

When the weather is bad, the action takes place indoors, in the university's comfortable, air-conditioned auditorium. Autorino CenterThere, the actors perform on an Italian-style stage rather than on a low outdoor platform a few meters from the audience.

In some ways, “Hamlet” benefited from being performed indoors. The moment when Mauricio Miranda, the play’s star, stepped offstage and onto the auditorium chairs was certainly more powerful than if he had simply maneuvered the blankets and lawn chairs of an outdoor audience. There was also a well-timed downpour that meant that, just minutes after watching a scene clear out bodies at the end of the play, the audience left the building in a torrential downpour, as is proper.

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Miranda is very good as Hamlet, very good indeed. He has played the role before – for the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival in Missouri – and has appeared in many other Shakespeare plays. He has already shone in many variety shows when he was a drama student at the University of Connecticut a few years ago.

Miranda is one of the few professional actors, even with an Equity card, to grace the boards of the Greater Hartford Shakespeare Festival, a largely amateur (albeit passionate and prepared) festival. He makes every one of his many lines feel meaningful and natural. He finds a way to make the role physical so that it’s not just a gloomy prince wandering around in a stupor. He finds moments of light amidst deliberately dark ones. He also has the right posture and attitude, dressed in a vest and black leather boots.

It's a fine performance and most of the other actors know how to stand back and let him do his thing. No one else on stage is his equal. The closest he comes to a focused, physically and mentally balanced performance is Heri Cruz Jr. as Laertes, who duels Hamlet at the end of the play.

Cruz is the male lead in the festival’s other play, “The Taming of the Shrew.” Unlike Miranda in “Hamlet,” Cruz can’t play his character, Petruchio, in a vacuum. He interacts closely with a wide variety of people, many of whom pretend to be other people in a series of confusing subplots about disguised lovers and mistaken identities.

Director Mason uses some complex blocking techniques and physical acting, but most of the comedic elements come from funny faces and voices. Characters laugh a lot at each other's jokes or seem extremely shocked at the slightest revelation.

Cruz's main adversary is Kiera Sheehan as Katherina, the “shrew” whom Petruchio is encouraged to “tame” so that she can be married off before her younger sister Bianca (Joslyn Eaddy Melendez).

Bianca has several suitors who must resort to subterfuge to be with her. Petruchio, smug, brash, obnoxious and bossy, is the only one interested in Katherina, who is described as an “irritating, brawling whiner” and worse.

The Sheehan family is present at the festival as always. Laura Sheehan, Kiera’s real-life mother and wife of “Hamlet” director Geoffrey, screeches and splutters as Katherina’s mother Baptista. Kiera Sheehan, who played Lady Macbeth at last year’s festival, carefully creates a defiant and cunning Katherina, who has her own personal reasons for submitting to Petruchio’s whims. There are plenty of winks and smirks between the two, which defuses the crude chauvinism that drives the entire play. There are several scenes that argue, or simply take for granted, that women should be completely subservient to men.

Since at least the 1970s, “The Taming of the Shrew” has been the most difficult Shakespeare script to tackle, especially if you still want to make it a comedy. The interplay between Cruz and Sheehan, which feels like they’re playing secret games of fun, helps smooth out the jarring sexism.

It’s ironic to do such an overtly sexist play, because for years the Greater Hartford Shakespeare Festival has cast traditionally male roles as women. Last year, Macbeth and his wife were a gay couple. This year, “Hamlet” features a female Polonius (who appears as a woman in a dress). Kiera Sheehan plays Horatio in male attire, and women play the guards, some of the play’s actors in the play and other small parts. Marie R. Altenor plays both the gravedigger in “Hamlet” and the idiotic servant Grumio in “The Taming of the Shrew.” Anna Pitblado plays a traditionally vulnerable female Ophelia in “Hamlet,” while in “The Shrew,” she plays three small, comic male roles (Curtis, the tailor, the pedant) and one female role (the widow).

The actors are all so comfortable in these portrayals that all the Shakespearean insults against strong women or soft men seem ridiculous. The shows are a strange mix of heavy theatrical concepts and random things we are supposed to accept or ignore.

The entire cast of “Hamlet” is also in “The Taming of the Shrew,” some of them playing multiple small parts, except for Miranda, who is Hamlet and only Hamlet. Each play also has its own musician. For “The Taming of the Shrew,” it’s the strolling fiddler Jonathan Kane. For “Hamlet,” it’s Jaeme Brennen McDonald wielding an electric guitar. There’s an opening number where all the young cast members sway in an overly choreographed punk rock routine, shouting “Hey Ho, let’s go!” It’s a motif the production thankfully doesn’t return to until the curtain call.

Each Greater Hartford Shakespeare Festival performance is preceded by events around 7 p.m., including the USJ modern dance ensemble dancing to pop songs such as Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” an Elizabethan-style musical duet and lectures by local Shakespeare scholars. The festival is also selling T-shirts and other merchandise for the first time and has expanded its food offerings to include hot dogs and popcorn.

The festival doesn’t ask much of you: sit on the grass (or, if it’s stormy, in an air-conditioned theater) with food and drink you’ve bought or brought, while listening to a well-recited, thoughtfully presented, and not-too-difficult Shakespeare play. This year, you can even choose between tragedy and comedy, but if you’re just looking to relax on a lawn, the bard’s maxim “the play is the thing” may not even apply.

The 2024 Greater Hartford Shakespeare Festival, presented by Capital Classics, runs through Aug. 4 with performances on the outdoor lawn at Saint Joseph’s University, 1678 Asylum Ave., West Hartford. The remaining performances of “The Taming of the Shrew” will be July 24 and 27 and Aug. 1, 2 and 4. The remaining performances of “Hamlet” will be July 25, 26, 28 and 31 and Aug. 3. In case of rain, performances will be held indoors at USJ’s Autorino Center. Tickets are $25 or free for youth 11 and under, with discounts for seniors, students, military, groups and those purchasing tickets to both plays. capitalclassics.org.