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The best moment ofHamnetis the first one.
The audience spends the minutes before the show looking at a giant picture of itself.
But he isnt there.
This is Hamnet, a bewildered 11-year-old kid of our own era.
he says, rather brightly) though he struggles to understand the words.
The Anglo-Irish group Dead Centre a collective based between Dublin and London is preoccupied by hauntings.
SoHamnetwould seem to be right in their sweet spot: It deals with loss and its metaphysical echoes.
ButHamnetfalls apart almost immediately.
In only 60 minutes, so much shouldnt sound like filler.
Also beware a show trying to make a fuzzy-minded connection to pop science.
A metaphor for the veil between life and death!
Which is, crucially, already a metaphor.
Then the team brings on Shakespeare (Moukarzel).
I wrote to you.
Im still writing to you in a way.
Just wanted to say hello, Shakespeare says, his voice low.
Its a big miscalculation.
God knows his gravity doesnt survive the baggy pantaloons and fake beard.
Yet he also lays claim to terrible sorrow.
But the actual sound of Shakespeare, of poetry, deforms everything around it.
Its so heavy, so patently beautiful, the rest of the show collapses in its presence.
Hamnetis at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through November 3.
