Chicago Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” with Eddie Izzard/Photo: Carol Rosegg

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So… A one-person “Hamlet,” retaining much of the text of Shakespeare’s longest and arguably knottiest play, which comprises no fewer than twenty-two living characters and one ghostly one? Is it a tour de force or a tour de farce? That is the question.

Fortunately for the enthralled audience who witnessed opening night of this short run at Chicago Shakespeare, it was decidedly the former, thanks to the fabulous theatrical instincts and intelligence of Eddie Izzard (who now goes by Suzy offstage and prefers the feminine pronoun). Izzard is a performer of genius, with an uncanny ability to convey nuances of thought and feeling and to draw the spectator into the dramatic mood and situation conjured onstage. Working with her brother Mark Izzard, the show’s adapter, and British director Selina Cadell, Eddie Izzard has managed to blow the dust off the world’s most revered play, making it speak to us clearly and movingly across the chasm of four centuries. And she has achieved this without sacrificing the work’s magnificent poetry and complex storyline. Indeed, by removing the large cast and simplifying the stagecraft, Izzard and company have created a language-oriented and commendably straightforward and ungimmicky version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. It’s a tremendous accomplishment all around.

It doesn’t hurt that in terms of dramaturgy and psychology, “Hamlet” is already something of a one-person play. Prince Hamlet—the theater’s most rich and rounded role—is always at the center, observing the goings-on of the less perceptive and articulate people around him, judging the world outside of his exquisitely and maybe excessively developed consciousness the way a jaded critic bemusedly experiences a ninth-rate show. Izzard captures the theatrical cast of Hamlet’s personality and the fourth-wall-breaking structure of the work, using performance styles ranging from straight declamation to cabaret to pantomime—including a closing scene in which she fences with herself, armed with an invisible rapier—to something close to stand-up comedy. Using visual more than verbal means, Izzard maintains the integrity and continuity of the multiple roles, crafting a telltale manner and gesture for every character.

Lucidly and elegantly, the show recounts the familiar tale: Prince Hamlet returns from university in Germany to his native Denmark, only to find that his father, the former king, has died suddenly and his mother Gertrude has remarried Claudius, her late husband’s brother. Claudius has just been crowned king, despite young Hamlet’s stronger claim to the throne. During a midnight visit from his revenant father, the prince learns to his dismay that old Hamlet was poisoned by Claudius, and that it is now up to him to avenge one nasty familial regicide by committing another. Disturbed by the implications of this primitive logic and seeking to achieve certainty about Claudius’ guilt, the gloomily philosophical Dane becomes literature’s most famous procrastinator, feigning insanity in order to conceal his designs. In the process he drives his beloved Ophelia, daughter of the officious royal counselor Polonius, into her own tragic bout with madness.

Chicago Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Eddie Izzard/Photo: Amanda Searle

In two hours and twenty minutes (including intermission), Izzard’s version offers us most of Hamlet’s Greatest Hits—including the ghostly encounter on the ramparts of Elsinore Castle, nicely evoked using sound and light, as well as the key soliloquies, Ophelia’s musical mad scene, the play-within-a-play to “catch the conscience of the king,” alas poor Yorick, etc.—presenting them with a light, quick touch. There are many fine theatrical details, too many to catalog here, but two that stand out are when a traveling player, recalling Hamlet’s instruction to “not saw the air too much with your hand,” sheepishly stops gesticulating mid-line and assumes a calmer and more natural acting style, and another when Hamlet, with the king and court approaching, declares he “must be idle” and leans against a wall like the village idiot, whistling loudly. Both moments underscore Izzard’s shamanic shape-shifting skill and self-awareness and self-control as an actor, which are a delight to behold. In a bit of inspired metaphorical whimsy, the hapless courtier-spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are enacted by Izzard’s expressive and carefully manicured hands, thus literally becoming the comical puppets and royal cat’s-paws that they figuratively are.

Chicago Shakespeare’s five-hundred-seat Courtyard Theater isn’t the ideal size for this intimate show, but scenic designer Tom Piper has adapted by placing the action within a small, prop-free, box-like set that reflects Hamlet’s description of Denmark as a prison. Tyler Elich deserves a round of applause for his evocative and dynamic lighting design, which turns the bare stage into a reflection of Hamlet’s moody, probing, mercurial mind.

With her impressive powers of impersonation and memorization, as well as the ability to condense and sharpen a story, Izzard seems like a figure out of theater history, perhaps one of those Victorian actor-managers who became stars by mastering one or two great roles. It’s our good fortune that Izzard has chosen Prince Hamlet, whose “tragic flaws”—paranoia, paralyzing skepticism, ironic detachment, intellect turned against itself, self-absorption balanced against self-doubt—are defining features of the modern world. For all the play’s spooks and swordplay and royal protocol and heightened language, Hamlet is still us, feeling trapped and isolated within an opaque and alienating world. Izzard’s dazzling performance holds up a mirror not just to nature, but to ourselves.

“Eddie Izzard Performing Hamlet” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, 800 East Grand. Tickets ($69 and up) are available at chicagoshakes.com or by calling (312)595-5600. Through May 4.