Content warning: this play contains references to sexual violence and abuse.
In true Shakespearean fashion, Ophelia Thinks Harder, presented by Fingerless Theatre and directed by Alex Kendall Robson, serves up an irreverent concoction of tragedy and comedy.
While the programme fancies it a “reimagining” of Hamlet, I don’t think that quite captures the way New Zealand playwright Jean Betts tinkers with Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Ophelia Thinks Harder does not reimagine an old story so much as it collages echoes from a familiar past into new harmony.
Citing “W. Shakespeare” as her co-writer, Betts folds his language into her own, weaving and recolouring Hamlet’s characters, scenes and conflicts into a time-bending tapestry. Iconic lines are drawn from all his major works; the Shakespeare-ophile will find plenty of references to point at and grin. Betts also adopts and extends Shakespeare’s metatheatrical flare with good taste and humour — perhaps proof that the movies have not yet exhausted our sensitivity to meta-artistic gesture.
Our Ophelia is not the demure princess of old; she shares a name and circumstance with Hamlet’s lover, but not much else. Against an onslaught of repression, she interrogates her womanhood: what it means to occupy her body, her family, and her world – a world with an omnipresent Virgin Mother, eternally available to idealise and to condemn.
Brea Macey makes a last-minute step into the leading role — due to an untimely illness ailing co-producer Jade Fuda — and boy (girl?), does she make an entrance. Her vivacity is palpable, her frustration enlivens, her confusion maddens, and it is just as potent when she is weaving poetry as when she is shouting affronts with her light Aussie twang.
In KXT on Broadway, the cast negotiates the traverse stage with grace. The set, designed by Hannah Yardley and Jimi Rawlings, features a chapel facade and shrine for the Virgin Mother on one end; on the other, an Eden-esque garden of moss sprawls from floor to ceiling (I had a souvenir moss morsel stick to my shoe, but director Alex Robson assures me they have plenty backstage for repatching). With the audience seated on two sides facing inwards to the stage, tableaux are organised across this plane between the religious and natural, the ordered and unbound. It’s an intimate but enchanting space.
The audience interaction is playful but never disruptive. Expect plenty of winks, scoffs, and sideward glances from minor characters, as well as occasional eye contact and address from a big hitter. Brea Macey, who plays Ophelia, recalls a preview performance where an audience member mouthed the entire ‘to be’ soliloquy in sync with her.
The physicality of the performers is captivating, clinically precise yet expressive, not unlike a ballet. Their bodies work in communion with the stage in fascinating and often confronting ways, punctuated by Alex Robson’s unpretentious costuming.
The stage, although small, never feels cramped. This would not be possible without the work of sound designer David Wilson, evoking atmosphere but never distracting, and lighting designer Sophie Parker; live candles flicker on Mary’s Shrine, warm light trickles through the mossy grove like dew, and bleak-white strobes blind us in the throes of psychological torment.
However, Bett’s inclination to puppeteer her characters through certain scenes is slightly distracting. Occasionally this hampers our empathy for Ophelia, and trivialises Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s duologues. But it’s most obvious in her writing of the unnamed maid, who she uses as a dramatic tool in much the same way Polonius uses as a sexual tool, and Ophelia as a domestic tool. The maid lacks the volition fundamentally requisite for tragedy. Despite Bett’s blindness to class as a dimension of character, Eleni Casmiatis pulls off a strong, sympathetic performance, especially while caught between the tumult of the headline couple.
At intermission the cast delivers a short, but certainly sweet, musical performance. Robson recalls his mentor Sue Fell’s lamentation for musical items falling out of fashion; not driven by plot, they are the first thing to be cut from most productions. The cast rekindles this tradition affectionately with a cover of The Lumineer’s Ophelia. Zachary Aleksander leads on the lute (it was a string instrument vaguely lute-ish in appearance) while the cast sing along, lounging about the stage like the party has come and gone, leaving them to deal with the morning after.
Shaw Cameron, who has experience playing Hamlet in the titular role, admitted to Honi that he prefers playing Betts’ rendition. He dishes out locker-room spankings to Horatio in one scene, and, with the same affectation, manipulates and abuses Ophelia in the next. His brutality reverberates and multiplies after intermission, all delivered with an infectious bravado. He makes us deeply regret our attraction to him.
Hamlet and the charming Horatio, played by Pat Mandziy, share a hilariously disorienting bromance. But the heat turns up once we learn who Horatio really has his heart set on. After the homoerotic overtones of the first act, we are not entirely convinced by his and Ophelia’s sudden consummation, but the scene is played with such charm that it’s hard not to gush, and we are left pining for more of the couple.
Finley Penrose was a surprise star as the ghost of St. Joan. Come to deliver a warning of imminent doom, they saunter about the stage, light a cigarette on a candle of Mary’s shrine, and muse while hitting drags; it’s an anachronistic delight.
While director Alex Robson was surprised to find Honi had sent a “male-presenting” reporter for the review, he was excited at the possibility of our publishing a misogynistic rant about ‘wokeness gone too far’, retelling how a similar incident during a previous production had led to sold out shows. Sorry to disappoint, but… while some of the play’s politics definitely feel dated — expect more than a few didactic, Barbie-esque speeches on feminist cliches — the performance packs a punch. It has force. What the script, at times, struggles to articulate, the performers express with dramatic fluency. It will leave you laughing, crying, and maybe even thinking a little harder yourself.
Ophelia Thinks Harder played from March 14th to 29th at KXT on Broadway.
If you have been affected by any of the contents of this review or of the play, please refer to the resources below for support:
NSW Sexual Violence Helpline — Provides 24/7 telephone and online crisis counselling for anyone in Australia who has experienced or is at risk of sexual assault, family or domestic violence and their non-offending supporters. The service also has a free telephone interpreting service available upon request.
1800RESPECT — A service available 24/7 with counsellors that supports everyone impacted by domestic, family and sexual violence.
Lifeline — 24/7 suicide prevention crisis support hotline for anyone experiencing a personal or mental health crisis.
