HAMLET, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Charles Fee, Director
POLONIUS & THE GRAVEDIGGER

This strikingly beautiful, intelligent, richly textured production was the first (and hopefully not the last) time I had an opportunity to work with Charlie Fee's extraordinary company. Skilled, personable, hard-working, thorough and extremely bright and well-read, the brilliant Charles Fee has assembled a group that respects texts and shares his vision of what theater can truly become. It was a great privilege to be welcomed into their midst through the good offices of Charlie's associate director, my long time chum Andrew May who called me to audition. I had first done Polonius to Andrew's Hamlet years ago, and, as can only happen with a handful of authors, revisiting the text was a revelatory and rewarding experience. The results were well received.

The Plain Dealer, Carolyn Jack

"...Wayne Turney does the Bard a favor by revealing the humor in Polonius, Ophelia and Laertes' father...Too often Polonius is played as a grave, unpleasant and pompous fool, rather like Malvolio in "Twelfth Night," but Turney draws a line between Polonius and the outright comedy of Dogberry in "Much Ado About Nothing" by emphasizing the funny convolutions of his speeches and creating an air of cheerfully oblivious meddlesomeness for him. As both Polonius and a gravedigger, Turney is the production's one true dramatic delight."