Absurdist Spins on Shakespeare Put Language in a Different Light

Tom Stoppard’s linked duo of short plays, Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth, uses Shakespeare as a springboard for political commentary via absurdity. inD Theatre’s production runs through Sunday on Bainbridge Island. 

It’s very Tom Stoppard to strike at the power of language to communicate truth by rewriting Shakespeare via a philosophical game derived from the philosopher Wittgenstein — such a show-off. Following in the footsteps of other devotees of the Theatre of the Absurd (Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, et al.), Stoppard’s interdependent short plays Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth cleverly deconstruct the rules of language to examine what happens when the words themselves and their meanings (as we understand them) contradict one another, and how that lack of meaning may even be transformed into a powerful tool against political oppression. inD Theatre’s production of the plays, directed with a light hand by Tom Challinor, is immersive, lively, and extremely engaging, wringing every last drop of comedy and pathos from these somewhat lesser-known gems. 

In Dogg’s Hamlet, the Cockney delivery person (Helene Minassian) who serves to connect both plays, stumbles into a seemingly alternate world; all he wants to do is deliver some lumber to build a platform for a school program, but when he tries to communicate this to a group of school children (Sydney Kaser, Carin Young, and Erin Gabbard) and their headmaster (Peter Cook), he finds that they speak a language known as Dogg, where common words and phrases have completely new meaning. What could be a dry academic exercise becomes a hilarious exploration of how soon words, divorced from their original meaning, can take on new ones when paired with action. 

Minassian brings excellent comedy chops to the increasingly exasperated delivery person (called “Easy” in other productions), and Kaser, Young, and Gabbard do an impressive job of individualizing their characters, perhaps particularly Kaser’s brown-nosing teacher’s pet. The play eventually moves into its primary set piece: a production of Hamlet. Well, sort of. The actors — the three school children and their headmaster, along with additional ensemble members — approach the truncated play like it’s written in a foreign language, because for them, it is. Characterization, meaning, poetry — the cast bumbles through the initial run with a loose grasp on them all, and even less so in the encore speed-run performance. Some highlights: Cook’s mugging Polonius, Gabbard’s knee-sliding Ophelia bellyflopping into her grave, and James Sgambati’s scene-stealing Laertes, who, once poisoned, takes his sweet time before expiring. 

The second piece, dedicated to Czech playwright Pavel Kohout, seems at first to be a straightforward production of Macbeth, modeled after the shortened plays Kohout and his fellow actors — barred from working in theatres by the 1970s Communist regime — developed to be performed in private homes. But incursions from uniformed law enforcement, sweeping the theatre with flashlights, eventually make it clear that there’s more under the surface than we initially assume. The play, put on by so-called political radicals, is halted by a smoothly sinister government agent (Sgambati), who accuses both the actors and the audience of political subversion. But the reintroduction of the delivery person from the first play, now speaking exclusively in Dogg, seemingly “infects” the rest of the actors with the new language and offers them a powerful tool to resist government oppression. 

Sgambati, now given more license to steal scenes, does so with panache in this second play, slithering around the stage with an air of cheerful menace. Other standouts are Jonathan Carter and Amy Jo LaRubbio’s Macbeth and Lady M, credible both in English and in Dogg, and Kendra Truett’s Cahoot, who seems supremely unimpressed with Sgambati’s blustering bureaucrat in, one presumes, a nod to the play’s original namesake. 

The set and costumes (by Dawn Janow) are simple, but effective; I particularly enjoyed the appropriately scraped-together vibes of the costumes in the Macbeth production as well as the too-long red tie on Sgambati’s government agent, perhaps as a subtle nod to another would-be fascist in our current political sphere. I was also impressed with the play’s sound design (by Eli Backer), which heightened the comedy in the first piece and the air of menace in the second. 

All in all a truly unique and delightful night at the theatre, and well worth the trip to Bainbridge Island. 

Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth run through 6/16 at inD Theatre on Bainbridge Island. Tickets are free (donations welcomed) here. Accessibility notes: restrooms are gender-neutral, single-stall; theatre and some common areas are wheelchair accessible.

Run time: 1 hour 50 minutes, with intermission.

Jill Farrington Sweeney is a Texas ex-pat getting to know the Seattle-area arts scene, and is perpetually on the hunt for good Mexican food. Her writing has appeared on TheaterJones, Onstage NTX, and NWTheatre.