LA STAGE WATCH is a series of articles by staff writer/blogger Don Shirley.

It’s beginning to look a lot like…summer?

In L.A. theater, prime time for Shakespeare is June through August, when alfresco productions are plentiful. But the current confluence of Shakespearean or Shakespeare-related productions reminds us that you don’t have to plan a picnic in order to see his work.

I saw four Bard-linked shows during the past week, including relatively big-deal productions of Equivocation at the Geffen, Richard III at A Noise Within and Love’s Labours Lost, which is the first multi-performance theatrical engagement at the new Broad Stage.

But let me shine a spotlight on the smallest and least marketed of the four: Hamlet, Shut Up at the never-more-appropriately-named Sacred Fools Theater. Jonas Oppenheim transforms the great tragedy into breathless comedy.

Derek Mehn as Hamlet and Kimberly Atkinson as Gertrude

His biggest idea was to remove Shakespeare’s time-consuming words. No, the actors aren’t silent as they depict most of the usual Hamlet narrative. They grunt, they shriek. One of them sings a song from the sidelines. A recorded instrumental score, accompanist Josh Senick and a few spelled-out words on a screen also help the audience keep its bearings.

Yet only one line is spoken, and it consists of only three words - which were not written by Shakespeare. They’re uttered in desperation, after a frantic bout of emergency miming fails to get an urgent point across, relatively late in the play.

Hamlet Shut Up displays a vigorous physicality reminiscent of silent film comedy, plus traditional Elsinore-style costumes. But it might be misleading to emphasize the old-school influences. The play is packed with more recent cultural references. I’m not going to give away the jokes, but I will note that Polonius’ obsessive relationship with his cell phone has very sobering consequences. Those who fail to turn off their phones during plays should take heed.

This is one of the shortest Hamlets ever - less than two hours. Most of the Rosencrantz/Guildenstern scenes and the Fortinbras finale are cut - but then those characters already have their own full-length comedies (courtesy of Tom Stoppard and Lee Blessing), so we need not pity them.

Oppenheim opens with the seldom-seen funeral of the slain king and also includes some flashbacks that were strangely missing from the original.  Have you ever wondered about Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s first date? Exactly how was Yorick reduced to just a skull?

Derek Mehn’s Hamlet looks sufficiently princely and agonized to pass as the real thing, but some of the other actors convey a more caricatured edge. The rapier-sharp ensemble maintains such impeccable timing that you’d think it had rehearsed for months.

Hamlet Shut Up is up there on the theatrical laugh meter with Land of the Tigers, which also started at Sacred Fools before its current run at the Lost Studio. Both shows deserve multiple extensions and cult classic status.

Speaking of extended runs, my first visit to the 499-seat Broad Stage in Santa Monica made me wonder how accessible it might be for productions imported from smaller L.A. companies - for example, Hamlet Shut Up or Land of the Tigers (or both in alternating performances!).

I wondered not only because the Broad is a gorgeous new venue that could serve as a great place for far-Westside audiences to see east-of-La Brea talent - or because it appears to have some big empty spaces on its online calendar. No, the main reason my thoughts strayed to the Broad’s future was because its currently imported Love’s Labours Lost, from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, lacks any clear and compelling reason for being the venue’s first theatrical offering.

LLL is one of Shakespeare’s least accessible comedies, rife with pedantic references that most people would understand much better with footnotes in hand. In fact, a man who took the empty seat next to me during intermission spent most of the second act silently tracking the lines from a book, instead of looking directly at the stage - that is, until he started snoozing.

The narrative is more frivolous than funny during the nearly three hours in Dominic Dramgoole’s staging. Some of the actors (of both genders, in contrast to this company’s previous all-male appearances in L.A.) expertly pump up the physical comedy to try to compensate for the many verbal jokes that don’t land. But generally the play feels like an example of what a character in Bill Cain’s Equivocation describes as Shakespeare’s “comedies-don’t-have-to-be-funny period.”

Why start your first theater season with a play that doesn’t unrelentingly grab an audience by the funny bone - or by the guts?

To the credit of Broad director Dale Franzen, the next theatrical offering there (Dec. 11-20) is a local creation that she first witnessed on a small L.A. stage - Jane Austen Unscripted from the Impro Theatre. However, it will still be on a small stage - the Broad’s 99-seat second space, behind the main stage.

Eight years ago, a plan was afoot for a resident theater company at the then-unbuilt venue that would later become the Broad. Dustin Hoffman - who is a major Broad Stage supporter as well as one of America’s best-known actors - and producer Ron Kastner were hoping to produce one classic and one new play per year there. That particular proposal is dead, Franzen tells me, but Hoffman still would like to perform at the Broad. His name alone probably could sell out the place for weeks.

Franzen encourages L.A. producers to think about the Broad. “I’m going to be very careful, because I can’t take a big risk that will close my doors,” she says. But “no door is closed at this time.”

I’m just brainstorming here, but perhaps enterprising producers at smaller L.A. venues should contemplate whether Hoffman might somehow be incorporated into an already successfully mounted show.

OK, maybe Hoffman wouldn’t fit easily into Hamlet Shut Up or Land of the Tigers - and it would be a shame to see a little-known actor who helped develop a production bumped to make way for a big name. Still, if star power could lubricate a passage to the Broad’s main stage for one of L.A.’s many midsize or smaller companies…think about it.

Regardless of Hoffman’s possible participation, I look forward to the day when A Noise Within plays the Broad, and when a small Westside production like Pacific Resident Theatre’s current The Browning Version plays a larger Eastside venue such as A Noise Within’s planned new home in east Pasadena.  If audiences won’t bridge the gaps between L.A.’s many far-flung parts, maybe the theater companies themselves should.

Hamlet Shut Up continues at  Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope, L.A. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm. Thur., Dec. 17, 8 pm. Signed performance on Thur., Dec. 10, 8 pm. Closes Dec. 19. www.sacredfools.org. 310-281-8337.

Love’s Labours Lost continues at Broad Stage, 11th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica. Fri., 1 and 7:30 pm. Sat., 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sun., 2 pm. Closes Sunday. www.TheBroadStage.com. 310-434-3200.

Photo by Diane Meyer.