Suzy Eddie Izzard's Hamlet Travels the Globe

Geopolitics has always been a part of Shakespeare's tragedy

It has long been clear that something is rotten in the state of America, if not the state of Denmark, which for the time being has maintained the sovereignty of Greenland and thwarted the evil of our nation’s leader.

Hamlet is relevant in every age, as I have written before.

But it strikes me that we may particularly need the wisdom of Shakespeare and the prince of Denmark right now.

Last month, I saw Eddie Izzard, the gender-fluid actor, who has embraced the name of Suzy in recent years, play the prince of Denmark in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Izzard’s marathon, one-woman performance of Shakespeare’s famous play.

The play has been adapted by Mark Izzard, the star’s brother, and it is slightly edited from the Bard’s original text.

Not only does Suzy Eddie Izzard, who wears black leggings, a black suit jacket, and red lipstick, play the melancholy Dane; she also plays essentially every part in the tragedy, 23 parts in total in her 2-hour-plus endurance test.

The British comedian, who was born in Yemen, is used to marathons, to endurance tests.

She is playing her solo Hamlet all over the world, including several locations in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada, where she will soon be performing in Toronto.

Known for her comedy specials, Izzard was also nominated for a Tony for her performance in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, has won Emmy awards, and has reportedly performed stand-up in many languages, including Arabic, Russian and Spanish, as well as English.

Beyond her stamina and virtuosity as a performer on stage, Izzard has also shown great stamina as an athlete and political activist.

According to the BBC, Izzard ran a reported 27 marathons in 27 days in honor of Nelson Mandela some years ago. Izzard ran those 27 marathons in those 27 days to reflect the 27 years that Nelson Mandela spent in prison.

Izzard’s will power is nothing short of astonishing.

I witnessed this myself when I saw her, as I say, in Hamlet several weeks ago.

Wearing a knee brace from a recent injury, Izzard played, as already noted, all 23 parts in the production in January, when I saw her at the Ricardo Montalban Theater in Hollywood.

Izzard was dressed for battle in that knee brace, armor of a sort, as she played the lead, as well as Ophelia, Laertes, Claudius, Polonius, Horatio and so many other parts.

In one of her most humorous touches, Izzard, who performed solo on a relatively spare set, depicted the treacherous Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two so-called friends of the prince of Denmark, as two fingers, or puppets, on her hands.

I was reminded of a Republican presidential debate roughly 10 years ago when Marco Rubio, then a U.S. Senator from Florida, called out Trump for his small hand size.

With most people, we should not be reductive, but with Trump, as with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, we need not be concerned about reducing them to their smallness, because, just as Hamlet’s so-called friends are puppets of Claudius, Trump, who is a stand-in for Claudius, is a puppet of Putin, who is a modern-day Fortinbras.

As I wrote on Substack back on December 15, in a piece headlined “Trump Hits New Low In His Post On The Reiners,” Trump speaks in the idiom of Claudius, though without the eloquence of Shakespeare.

Of Rob Reiner, who tragically was murdered in December, as was Michele, his wife, Trump wrote in a social media post, “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star.”

In his hideous, oxymoronic characterization of Rob Reiner, which included references to Trump Derangement Syndrome, our nation’s solipsist-in-chief demonstrated not only the treachery of Claudius; Trump also replicated the villain in his tortured language, for Claudius in his opening speech in the play speaks somewhat similarly with an array of oxymorons when he says, for instance, “With mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage.”

At the end of that Substack post in December, I alluded to the fact that there have been productions of Hamlet where Horatio is shunted offstage and assassinated by Fortinbras, the Norwegian king and mortal rival of Denmark.

The analogy can be taken only so far, because, as I also pointed out in my December post, Norway is a great nation, an ally and a member of NATO.

But Trump, who has betrayed our own country, is indeed a stand-in for Claudius, and he is no doubt in bed with Fortinbras Putin, who has had kompromat on our nation’s disgraced chief executive for some time now.

I wrote several months ago, as I have for years, that we need to impeach and convict Trump, and I warned us in my December post of what could follow.

It seems as if there has been a spate of Hamlet productions lately. As I wrote earlier in the piece, it goes without saying that the play will always be relevant in every age. But it does strike me that we need the wisdom of Shakespeare and the prince of Denmark more than ever right now.

Yes, I have seen quite a few Hamlets in the past year or so, in addition to Hamnet, the film based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel.

I am convinced that Suzy Eddie Izzard, who played all 23 parts of Hamlet in January in Hollywood, is the most remarkable Hamlet I have seen.

Again, she is not only Hamlet; she is also Horatio, Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia, and all the other primary characters wrapped up in one person.

And interestingly Izzard did conclude the performance with Horatio being thrown against a wall and shot.

This avant-garde component of the show, which was directed by Selina Cadell, reminds us of the Fascist impulses of our nation’s wannabe tyrant and Putin, who, as I have written before, is essentially the devil.

Yes, Hamlet is a study in geopolitics, just as it is a character study.

Recently, at a security conference in Munich, Marco Rubio, secretary of state and national security adviser to Trump, tried to reassure our traditional European allies that we in the United States and Europe share interests, if not values, and that those interests derive from our supposed white, Christian heritage.

I tend to doubt that our allies in Europe were reassured.

While Iran is closing off the Strait of Hormuz, through which runs some 20% of the world’s oil, and Trump is moving an armada of U.S. military assets toward the Middle East, I thought once more about Izzard’s performance.

She broke the 4th wall at the outset of the play and told us, with more than a little irony, that we should not laugh. But Izzard, of course, is a comedian, who is extremely funny.

Moreover, Hamlet, though it is a tragedy, has always blended in elements of comedy.

Does Trump, he of the small hands, truly think that he will fare any better than the two puppet fingers of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?

Our nation’s disgraced chief executive could be leading us to the brink of yet another completely unnecessary war and making us vulnerable to military threats elsewhere around the globe.

Fortinbras Putin is lurking off-stage, hoping to assassinate Horatio.

But some of us, like Suzy Eddie Izzard, will always tell Hamlet’s story, as well as the story of our country, a nearly 250-year-old democracy, whose leaders, Republicans, Democrats and independents alike, must not allow the solipsist-in-chief to bring us closer to a possible Armageddon.