Anthony Pennino’s play picks up right where Shakespeare’s Hamlet leaves off: Fortinbras (Peter Collier) has just walked in on the aftermath of Hamlet’s revenge, which has left a shocked and bloodied Horatio (Blake Merriman) as its sole survivor. Haunted by Hamlet’s final request to have his story told, Horatio attempts to craft a play about the Danish prince’s life. But alas, poor Horatio! Beyond its interest-piquing premise, the show offers little of note. Billed as the “missing sixth act of Hamlet as written by Monty Python while on crack,” it misses the mark as both epilogue and lampoon. Trying to blend iambic pentameter with expletive-laced vernacular, Pennino has trouble establishing his desired tone and ends up merely rehashing the recipe used by most Shakespeare-inspired Fringe shows: a slew of tongue-in-cheek Bardophile jokes, a dash of absurdist comedy but nary a dram of distilled narrative. The production's strongest asset is Courtney Moors, who plays Nell, the owner of an S/M–friendly cottage where Horatio resides. Outlandish but surprisingly insightful, Nell offers a glimpse of what I, Horatio might look like after a few rewrites. In its current form, however, it doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be or not to be.—Chris Corbo
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