Like a long-lost rock-opera cousin to Jesus Christ Superstar and The Who’s Tommy, Hamlet The Rock Musical has arrived at North Hollywood’s El Portal, and if the show’s original Broadway incarnation flopped big way back in 1976, its 2020 revival is anything but that a bomb. Instead, it’s one of the most excitingly staged, hummably hook-blessed, and thrillingly performed rock musicals I’ve seen in a good long while.

It takes chutzpah and talent to reinvent what is arguably the greatest play ever written, and though Bard purists may carp that there’s a good deal more of composer/lyricist Cliff Jones than wordsmith Will Shakespeare in Hamlet The Rock Musical’s over three-dozen songs (with nary a spoken word to link them), they manage to recount Hamlet’s tale quite intelligibly (or at least for those in the audience who’ve seen the Shakespeare original at least once), and do so in just over ninety minutes plus intermission.

From the dramatic “The First Watch,” which has Denmark’s recently murdered King revealing himself in spectral form to Hamlet’s best buds Horatio (Thomas Hobson) and Marcellus (Michael Deni), to “That It Should Come To This,” a simply gorgeous ‘80s power-ballad that lays bare Hamlet’s (Payson Lewis) agonized heart and soul, to “To Thine Own Self Be True,” in which Polonius (Larry Cedar) offers words of wisdom to a young man in crisis, to “Nunnery,” which has Hamlet rejecting the woman who loves him (Fatima El-Bashir’s Ophelia) in the most heartless of ways,

to the play-within-a-play “To The Death,” that accuses Hamlet’s uncle Claudius (Kevin Bailey) of poisoning his brother (“He got it in the ear”) before wedding the widowed Queen Gertrude (Carly Thomas Smith), to “I Cannot Turn To Love,” which has Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, and Ophelia’s brother Laertes (Ian Littleworth) bemoaning their destinies in soaring five-part counterpoint, Hamlet The Rock Musical tells its story in one memorable song after another, and that’s just Act One.

Whatever went wrong back in ‘76 when a then-titled Rockabye Hamlet closed only a week after its opening night, there’s nothing at all rotten about its redubbed, retooled (with Craig Fair’s additional music and lyrics) revival.

Director Bill Castellino and choreographer Janet Roston keep things electrifying throughout (the groovy 1960s Ike and Tina Turner-moves of “Set It Right” and the Madonna-style voguing of “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern” are Roston dance highlights), with added snaps to fight directors Matt Franta and Brandon Pugmire for a hair-raising, edge-of-your-seat grand-finale joust to the death.

Above all, Hamlet The Rock Musical is blessed with a sensationally talented cast to rival Broadway’s best, beginning with Lewis’s charismatic, vocally soaring Prince Of Denmark.

 A revelatory El-Bashir conjures up memories of Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, Diana Washington, and Audra McDonald, particularly in her breathtaking, heartbreaking “To Have Seen What I Have Seen,” while Smith gives Whitney, Mariah, and Celine a run for their pop diva money in a showstopping “No Use Pretending”, and Deanna Anthony (Grin) belts like Jennifers Holiday and Hudson in “Something Is Rotten In Denmark” opposite power-piped blue-eyed soulster Bruce Merkle (Honeybelle).

Littleworth not only raps with the best of them in “Don’t Unmask Your Beauty To The Moon” but hits vocal high notes in “Silence” matched by Deni and Hobson’s own rafters-reachers in “The First Watch.”

Bailey’s commanding Claudius, Cedar’s wise and winning Polonius, and Steve B. Green’s darkly compelling Ghost and Priest are all three splendid, Justin Michael Wicox’s Rosencrantz and dance captain Alli Miller’s Guildenstern are quirky, scene-stealing double delights, and Marie Gutierrez, fight captain Tim McGarrigal, and Julia Springer do their own song-and-dance dazzling as Players and Courtiers.

Scenic/video designer Nick Iwaskow’s castle-ramparts set provides a darkly dramatic backdrop throughout, strikingly lit by John A. Garofolo and Iwaskow, and Mylette Nora’s costumes are just as stunning.

Music director Doug Oberhamer not only elicits ravishing vocals from his all-star cast but conducts Hamlet The Rock Musical’s sensational nine-piece orchestra as sound designers Leon Rothenberg and Jonathan A. Burk provide a pitch-perfect rock-concert ready sound design mix. (Orchestrations are by Fair, arrangements by Fair and Oberhamer.)

Hamlet The Rock Musical is produced by David Carver Music. Linda Rowe and Sarah Burgess Chaulk are co-producers and Rhodie Smith is associate producer.

Casting is by Michael Donovan, CSA. Richie Ferris, CSA, is casting associate. Cate Cundiff is production stage manger, Lily Alia is general manager, and Jeremiah Thies is production manager.

If producer Carver’s wishes come true, Hamlet The Rock Musical’s El Portal debut could well be just the first stop in a 2020 World Tour. Whatever the future holds, L.A. audiences are guaranteed one humdinger of a show this week and next.

The El Portal Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.
www.elportaltheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
February 14, 2020
Photos: Barry Weiss

Tags: Cliff Jones, El Portal Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, William Shakespeare