Great comedians sometimes make for great actors, and Suzy Eddie Izzard joins those ranks with her solo performance of Hamlet, now playing at ACT's Strand Theater.Solo adaptations of great plays tend to be showcases for performers more than they tend to shed new light on a classic work. And that is m ostly the case with Izzard's solo take on Hamlet, with a fairly brisk adaptation — brevity being the soul of wit, after all — by Izzard's brother, Mark Izzard.Wearing a vaguely sci-fi, vaguely Elizabethan jacket cinched at the waist, leather pants, high-heeled boots, and brick-red, talon-like nails, Izzard commands the small stage at The Strand for over two hours, showing off feats of versatility and memorization that would be the envy of any actor.Lighting (designed by Tyler Elich) and sound effects help with the Ghost sequences, when Hamlet's father appears to him and his friend Horatio, but apart from that, Izzard alone provides all the context and modulation changes to mark the shifts between characters.Izzard shies away from putting on too many voices, relying instead on subtler changes of tone and posture — Claudius gets a pompous, somewhat Trumpian swagger, Gertrude a slightly softer tone, and Polonious walks with a limp always clutching an invisible cane at one hip. The lack of clear demarcation between the characters' voices does make for confusion, particularly in scenes when three or four people are speaking, and there are times when Izzard seems to be rushing just to get through a complicated scene.Hamlet's famous soliloquies get some especially subtle and nuanced treatment, as Izzard opts more for quiet contemplation in Shakespeare's poetry over emotion and bombast, to good effect.One comes away with an impression of Hamlet that Shakespeare likely intended — of a man not mad, but mournful, rageful, cunning, and feigning madness (ghosts aside) in the face of thoughtlessness and outright evil.Photo by Carol RoseggBorn comedian that she is, though, Izzard truly sparkles in bringing out the humor in Shakespeare's text. The characters of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, forever rendered the stuff of absurdist comedy by playwright Tom Stoppard, with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, get turned into hand puppets in Izzard's version. Clicking those brightly painted nails, Izzard comically interacts with her two hands each time Rosencrantz and Gildenstern enter, dutifully muttering "My lord" with every exit.And perhaps the most shining moment of this production comes with the gravedigger scene, when Izzard puts on a proper Cockney accent to portray this intentionally comic character who likes to speak in riddles, and sing while he digs. One gets the sense here that Izzard is most at ease with the rhythms of Shakespeare's comedy, and barely has to try to illicit uproarious laughs.The most physically difficult piece of a solo Hamlet is the final jousting scene between Hamlet and Laertes, and Izzard pulls this off with skill, spinning and whipping about with invisible rapiers, and throwing herself against walls.Mark Izzard's adaptation and the direction by Selina Cadell — who previously directed Izzard off-Broadway in her solo Great Expectations — keep things moving at a breakneck pace. Though purists may object to the many cuts, which include the excising of Polonious famous bit of advice to his son, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."Fans of Izzard will delight in this feat of theatrical bravery and endurance, and there is no question that she has the acting chops to pull this off. Does it prove that Shakespeare's most heralded work of theater can survive a solo treatment with all of its wonders intact? No, but it certainly proves that, like she avidly runs marathons in her spare time, Ms. Izzard can pull off the Western world's most famous tragedy all on her own, and in heels. Izzard's 'Hamlet' plays at ACT's Strand Theater through April 20. Find tickets here. ...read more read less