Actor Hugh Kennedy bikes and runs several miles a day. His intensive exercise regimen, which also includes swimming, yoga and regular visits to a chiropractor, is like that of a prizefighter.
"That's what playing Hamlet feels like on most days," he said recently over a salad at a Minneapolis eatery. "You're going so many rounds and you can't flag."
If Kennedy, 25, seems like he's battling for a belt, it's because he's getting the biggest break of his young career. In the three years since he graduated from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater's BFA program, Kennedy has acted in a half-dozen productions at the Guthrie, including "Arsenic and Old Lace" and "A View From the Bridge."
But none of his previous parts compares to the Olympian heft of Hamlet. It's a role that's on many a bucket list; Kennedy won it by besting 100 other Twin Cities actors.
"No doubt Hugh's got the craft, the physical, mental and psychological strength to climb this mountain," said director Bain Boehlke, whose contemporary setting of the Shakespearean tragedy opens Friday at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis. "But what made him really stand out at the auditions was his soul. He's got this intelligence and charisma and is just a really beautiful person, which is a perfect fit for Hamlet."
Director Boehlke left Shakespeare's language unchanged in his big production, but he's updated the set, which he designed, to the 1970s. Concrete and glass serve as the playing area. Other modern touches include an array of surveillance cameras and characters communicating by Skype.
A week before opening, the director was thinking of doing a multimedia Facebook memorial site for Hamlet, the young prince whose uncle has killed his father, married his mother and ascended to the throne. No kidding, it's complicated.
"They are people of this world, of today," Boehlke said. "They talk in a distinct idiom but in every other way, they're not removed from us. And Hugh invites us in."