Almost entirely built of Shakespeare's text - with interpolations - this adaptation aims to get at what might have been the spirit of the original, built on research and close reading, delivering a Hamlet like nothing you've seen before. It starts with the notion of a play about generational conflict, and one with immediate appeal for all.

Here's the blurb: Generations collide, rules get broken, everybody's in show biz, and everything you know is wrong. Shakespeare cut and shuffled, plus sex, lies, tik-toks, go-go boots and power chords. Set in Swingin' London, 1966, and the present.



For the deeper dive, here's the program note from the Wilbury Theater Group's presentation in February 2020.

NOTE:
All the changes in this adaptation are aimed at the nearly impossible task of seeing Hamlet fresh. We’re trying for a production that plays the way I imagine Hamlet must have played to its first audiences, before it was a monument: entertaining, funny and dark, with contemporary references, context, and jokes clear to all – a production with immediate appeal not only to the elite, but to everyday people as well.

Our production wipes away the Hamlet traditions of the Romantic hero, the Victorian intellectual, and the neurotic Freudian, all of which were established long after Shakespeare’s day. In fact, one of the earliest recorded references to the play is a joke within another Elizabethan play. A character dashes across the stage repeatedly. “Who are you, Hamlet?” is the punch line, suggesting the original was a manic, active Dane.

A close reading of all the Hamlet texts, including the 'bad' quarto, suggested unusual stage directions and new clues to character. A dive into the archives brought more clues in the form of historical details. I learned that then as now, bright but poor townspeople were given scholarships to university; that the children of servants played and schooled with children of royalty. And that the play itself might have been originally received not as a study of character, but as a political tale, akin to the history plays.

We wanted immediacy at all costs. Any joke that wasn’t still funny, line that wasn’t easily understood, or emotional situation that was buried under dense language had to change. It could be cut, explained in some way, or replaced with a contemporary analogue. We hope that the result, including out-of-time comic, serious, and bawdy moments, will bring a liveliness that the original surely had before the passing of 400 years obscured it.

Finally, working with Davis Alianiello, Devra Levy and the deeply talented, hard-working and inspiring group at The Wilbury, we sought to address the gender politics, or to say it plainly, the misogyny in the play. Ophelia is just so badly treated. Our adaptation draws out that treatment, and speaks back to it, imagining how a young woman like Ophelia might react today. This last set of changes are in some sense ‘against Shakespeare,’ but in this most strange of revenge plays, a little revenge seems in order.

Hamlet is forever, and affords a thousand different readings. I look forward to hearing yours.