LA TIMES 
For a less conventional version of the "Hamlet" story--a downright kooky one, in fact--look no further than "Mad Boy Chronicle" at 24th Street Theatre.
     In the U.S. premiere of Canadian playwright Michael O'Brien's perplexing parody, Shakespeare's tragedy has been transposed to a fanciful Helsingor in the Viking era (circa AD 999), as Christian missionaries begin their first penetration into barbarian Denmark.
     Though given new names, the characters and their actions parallel their Shakespearean counterparts; however, the plays diverge not only in their outcomes but also in their focus.
     Assuming considerably greater prominence than even "Mad Boy" Horvendal/Hamlet (Michael McGroarty) is Lord Fengo/Claudius, a lusty, bellicose thug brilliantly portrayed by Adam Bitterman. Perhaps it's a sign of the times that illegitimate rulers garner more emphasis and ultimately more sympathy than weak crusaders for justice.
     In other upheavals, Lilia/Ophelia (Carolyn Palmer) becomes a deranged warrior, while her father Mathius/Polonius (David Mersault) flips from meekness to child-molesting lechery (though he's still as ineffectual as ever).
     Denise Gillman's direction sustains interest though striking visual flourishes, such as having the dying Gerutha/Gertrude (Terra Shelman) slide across the stage, unfurling a long red swath of fabric in her wake.
     But the uneasy question remains: What to do with the references once we get them? Echoing the original in couplets like "The baptism's the place/Where I'll rub Viking justice in his face" underscores the central problem here: The conceit is too weirdly elaborate for parody, but not strong enough to extricate itself from the shadow of a greater play.

- Philip Brandes, 2001

BACKSTAGE WEST
Combining some irreverent Norse history with a giant dollop of farce, a barrel of bathos, some worse-than-verse, some Viking urban legends, some crusading Christianity, and a giant dose of stick-this-in-your-ear puh-leaze!, this work purports to tell the real story of Hamlet, as extrapolated from the "Bad Quarto" of Shakespeare's Hamlet; Gesta Danorum, the Medieval source for the Hamlet story; the Icelandic Hrafinkel's Saga, Rosalind Miles' The Rites of Man; Robert McNeil's The Story of English, and Jane Goodall's Life Among the Wild Chimpanzees--bolstered, one senses, by a number of uncharted trips aboard the Good Ship Lollipop, a fever dream, and a quick visit to Hustler's retail dictionary outlet. If this is strictly a send-up, it's hilarious; if it's a history, it's dubious; if it's Crusader-impelled, it's religious legend; if it's intended as archival realism, just have a good time.

Fengo, Lord of Helsingor (a terrifically entertaining Adam Bitterman), and his wife, Gerutha (a sexy, minimalist Terra Shelman), have together done some dastardly deeds on Horvendal the Elder (Peter Konerko as a ghost), the father of Horvendal, the eponymous Mad Boy (Michael McGroarty), who is about to avenge his father's death by killing, or otherwise mutilating, the horrible Fengo, his acolytes, his court, his soldiers, his friends, and his enemies. Falling for Lilja (the ever-lovely Carolyn Palmer, whom we could watch forever), the rebellious daughter of Matthius (David Mersault), Fengo's expendable cohort, Horvendal is constantly frustrated in his attempts to get Fengo. When Fengo is saved from horrible death by chanting Christian monks--Kimberly Dennison, Mersault, Greg Foran, Kevin Moran, and John-Austin Miller in multiple roles--he is prepared to do whatever it takes to fast-forward Christianity, even if it means barbarously twisting every one of its precepts and raising the head-rolling count. A moral lesson and a hypocritical one, it's easy to see where the message missed the Federal Express transmission.

Excruciating performances, as laughable and as probable as historical improbability, make this multilevel attack on accepted concepts a glorious hoot, open to any and every interpretation, observing and denying every Christian and pagan cult that ever surfaced, responding well to Lilja's question to her fated lover/savior, Horvendal, "Oblivion--is that near Jerusalem?" The accents waver, voices sometimes get lost in the lofty space, the insistent drumming, before, during, and after the play, is headache-inspiring, but it's all in a rousingly good cause.

- Madeleine Shaner, 2001