Will Lyman as Claudius is the only actor whose words come out ''trippingly on the tongue." The rest of this squandered cast is either too hyperbolic -- Jeffrey Donovan's Hamlet, Jeremiah Kissel's Ghost, Jonno Roberts's Laertes, and Georgia Hatzis's Ophelia -- or too bland -- Karen MacDonald's Gertrude and John Kuntz's Guildenstern. Sam Weisman, better known as a film and theater director, manages to be both too bland and too hyperbolic as Polonius.
Where did it all go wrong? With so much talent on a stage smartly bedecked by Leiko Fuseya in a more spacious corner of the Common, this was supposed to be the production that put it all together for the company.
For the first 15 minutes or so it seems as if this modern-dress interpretation could work on every level. J Hagenbuckle's sound design (the best yet) and music set an ominous ''Dark Shadows" mood, as does the set, with a large, off-kilter silver cross that separates one tier from another and a blood-red set of stairs and doors.
Lyman comes out as Claudius, the new king, as if he's the soul of benevolence. He's sitting on top of the world, having laid claim to the kingdom and the queen, though no one but him knows at this point that he won his position by killing the king, Hamlet's father.
Donovan, the star of ''Touching Evil" on the USA Network, starts out fairly well, too. It's obvious that he has decent chops and fine body language. But when Kissel, one of the best actors in Boston, comes out as the ghost, the whole production joins him in purgatory. Made up like a Juan Peron who walked in from ''Dawn of the Dead" instead of ''Evita," he growls instead of speaks and, in general, cuts a rather ridiculous figure. Polonius, who is a ridiculous figure, becomes a mere dullard. As each of the talented actors enters you hope that this is going to be the one who rights the ship, but it's not to be.
Except for Lyman, they all seem to be groping for a sense of who they are and what they're doing in this sublime play. Lyman's transformation from confident king to Nixonian cover-upper is a model piece of acting. Donovan, meanwhile, seems the same callow youth at the end as he was in the beginning.
