Hamlet - confused

Saw Ashland Shakespeare Festival production of Hamlet last night and let's say hamlet - con kindly: it's a great play! But it was a production without rhyme (well it did have some rhyme), reason, or point of view.  The stage set interestingly included a set up for a band, for guitar solos, for singing into a standing mic - but there was no sensible use or context for any of these props - I would be interested in a hamlet who was a moody teen who expressed himself not thru sililoquy but thru Rick solos but there was no point of view at all anywhere in this mishmash. The costumes included period coutier getup, clownish pantaloons (for r and g), hamlet's inky black, ridiculous military costume for fortinbras and his men - where are we? What's the point? A woman was cast as Horatian - a big mistake, in that it's central to the play that hamlet needs a buddy (and can't find one).  The acting was histrionic and full of needless bold gestures and theatrics - exactly the kind of acting that S via hamlet despises (speak the speech I pray you...). Truly one of the most confused and poorly conceived productions of H I've ever seen.

The Gamm Theater's great Hamlet production - with an original insight at the end

Last night saw a great production of "Hamlet" at the Gamm Theatre, in Pawtucket, R.I. - very fast-paced with excellent timing, 2.5 hours and completely riveting for the entire audience in this intimate house - stark set with simple red drapery backdrop and bare minimum of props kept our focus on the characters, the action, and the language - Tony Estrella's Hamlet was particularly excellent, played in near-contemporary dress, with good American inflection on the lines, especially the soliloquies, which made all seem natural and free, a character wrestling with a terrible fate and a troubled soul. I'd say the emphasis from direct Frederick Sullivan Jr. was on the craft in Hamlet's behavior - they seemed to go with the interpretation of Hamlet as a shrewd plotter who puts on his madness to provoke others and to draw them out - and yet the character still has edges and ambiguities, e.g., if his madness is a strategy, why is he so brutally cruel to Ophelia? There may have been a few moments over the top - some of the physicality was a little too much (e.g., the Ghost on the floor re-enacting the poisoning) but for the most part the action was just right - not too stagy, not too staid - the fencing very well staged, and frightening. Finally, worth noting is the interesting emphasis on Fortinbras and the troops from Norway, especially at the end (the Norwegian army scene and the rarely heard "How all occasions" soliloquy is very effective, too) - at the end, as Fortinbras settles in on the throne and a Norwegian flag unfurls, the it's an obvious echo of the German occupation of the 40s, and Sullivan does something I've never seen or heard of: the Norwegian soldiers execute Horatio, offstage, at the end, leaving nobody left in the Danish court to tell Hamlet's story. Made me go back and read the last line again, this time with new appreciation of the possibilities. (BTW, I've always hated Horatio and found him to be a terrible and feckless friend to Hamlet, not much more helpful that R&G. I think Charles Marowitz was first to discuss this aspect of Horatio's character.)