Women Playing Hamlet‘s ladies doth protest too little

If you’ve ever bemoaned theater’s lack of PowerPoint slides or Baha Men references, I’ve never met you. But you might be the ideal audience for Women Playing Hamlet, a cute and uncomplicated new comedy from playwright William Missouri Downs.

The Unicorn gives Downs’ script the royal treatment, loading down four talented actors with sampler platters of roles that, in an inversion of Shakespeare-era performance, give women every part. Wacky high jinks, as they say, ensue. And if you can suspend snobbiness, you’ll probably have a pretty good time.

The opening line, a cornball knock-knock joke, breaks the fourth wall and sets the tone for the show. Jessica (Katie Karel), the play’s anchor and narrator, is an anxious actress in her late 20s, well past the 15 seconds of fame that being thrown from the George Washington Bridge in the opening credits of a Tarantino film bought her. Now she’s playing Hamlet, passing up a cushy stint on The Young and the Restless for the grit and greater integrity of the stage. To help her nail the role, she hires an acting coach who once played Hamlet to critical acclaim, consults a foppish literary scholar who can’t control his orgasms (because comedy!), and presents Hamlet’s symptoms to a psychiatrist.

Complicating things are the death of her father, her mother’s remarriage (at his funeral, because comedy!), and an understudy who wouldn’t mind edging her out of the role.

If that sounds like a lot of voices to sustain, it is. Downs’ revolving door of quirk strives for the offbeat edge of Christopher Durang and achieves a few moments of organic, surprising comedy — a shifting pay scale for Gwen’s acting students stands out. Too often, though, he coasts on — or repeats — easy gags and predictable punch lines, with results that steer the action perilously close to inadvertent kitsch. A joke about the ubiquity of acting MFAs is amusing once or twice, but not eight times.

The Unicorn’s cast is solid, though you sense desperation at times. Karel does her best to energize sarcastic straightwoman Jessica. Cathy Barnett earns every laugh as a lecherous humanities professor, stroking her mustache with pornographic relish. And Meredith Wolfe is a dedicated, expressive performer, bringing a distinct voice to each of her seven roles.

Kathleen Warfel seems most in tune with the script’s sensibilities, committing fully to the silliness instead of swimming upstream. Her mock Minnesota accent (as Jessica’s mother) is as gleeful and goofy as her mock British (as too-titillated Lord Derby). Barnett takes the opposite tack, scoring occasional points for realism and restraint. She finds authentic vulnerability and angst in Gwen, and her evolving relationship with Jessica is one of the play’s most satisfying.

All of Downs’ lightning-bug characters crop up, ostensibly, to help solve the play’s puzzle: Jessica has a “block” when it comes to understanding Hamlet (and, thus, playing him). But despite contemplating a host of ills and treatments, Downs never seems to settle on what that block is.

It’s Hamlet’s loneliness, Gwen posits. Millennials can’t relate; in the digital age, they’re never alone.

It’s bad writing, Jessica retorts, needless pomp bloating a simple revenge plot.

Even a bartender (conveniently, also a Shakespeare buff) proposes a thesis: Hamlet’s waffling is decidedly feminine. Men are better at making decisions, he argues, because they have fewer characters to play in life. Women, on the other hand, “have to play many roles: wife, nurse, teacher, daughter, caregiver …”

Sorry, male nurses and teachers. You heard the man.

The play is at its best when the zany background noise softens to reveal real conflict. Act 2 gives us one of the play’s tautest dramatic sequences, a lean confrontation between Gwen and Jessica in which their cool banter heats up. Downs can write crackling, focused scenes when he gives himself room.

The technical elements add style and polish to the script. Scenic designer Ian R. Crawford finds creative ways to flesh out a bare stage. (The set, Jessica explains, should be achieved through “verbal scene painting.”) A classic curtain serves as both proscenium and punch line, pinching scenes short to comic effect. Alex Perry’s smart lights provide definition and spectacle (when called for), and Georgianna Londré Buchanan’s costumes inject appropriately wild colors and fabrics.

Women Playing Hamlet is a fast-paced and lighthearted show, and if you demand nothing else from it, you’ll leave entertained. But those who prefer method in the madness may wonder why this world premiere made the cut.