Elsinore On The Potomac

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

FORTINBRAS by Lee Blessing

The most influential play in English, Hamlet, is generally taken to show the failure of the Man of Thought. It ends with the arrival of the alternative ideal: Fortinbras, conquering prince of Norway, a decisive Man of Action. Lee Blessing's fascinating new play begins literally where Hamlet ends and asks whether Fortinbras proves any better a leader.

Much else is on Blessing's mind in this weirdly comic piece: Shakespeare's shaky dramaturgy (rescued by friendly pirates, indeed!), the meaning of death and the afterlife, the ubiquitous enigma of TV. The play lampoons official cover-ups: by the time Hamlet's friend Horatio tells people what really happened at Elsinore, everyone believes Fortinbras' concoction about murderous Polish spies instead. The hero puns bawdily about nights with Ophelia's lubricious ghost. But the deepest concern is for the shallowness of modern politics.

As Fortinbras, Daniel Jenkins enters talking in the clipped modern diction of a yuppie warrior -- contemptuous of doubt, confident of the power of confidence itself. Dumb luck makes him an epic hero. Every country his armies confront submits without battle. Then comes disaster just as abrupt and irrational: his soldiers all march into the Indus River and drown. The man of action, it turns out, is as storm tossed on the seas of fate as any man of thought -- and far less equipped to handle the swings of fortune. Any parallels to George Bush and the gulf war are obviously intentional.

The staging is by Des McAnuff, who on Broadway guided Jenkins as Huck Finn in the musical Big River and shaped Blessing's comedy of U.S.-Soviet relations, A Walk in the Woods. This production inaugurates a new main stage at La Jolla Playhouse, outside San Diego, where McAnuff is artistic director. Neither the architect nor the playwright could ask for a more visually seductive showcase.