tt had been a busy few days and I came to the KXT theatre feeling very tired. I hadn’t really researched this play, was told that it was a long work, and to be honest, really wasn’t sure how I’d go with it.
At first, my listlessness was winning and I felt myself drifting in and out of the play. I was thinking about what I was going to make for dinner when I got home.
Then I started engaging with the play; the fierceness of the performances, the feminist perspective that was strongly coming through, the playwright’s anarchic style, playing the main scenes from Hamlet but also including great lines from other plays in Shakespeare’s canon. I loved the way that it was Ophelia herself who delivered the to be or not to be speech, beautifully delivered by Brea.
Sure, I still dipped in and out of the play a bit, and I was still thinking about dinner, but I was with the play now.
The work of Director Alex Kendall Robson, Set designers Hannah Yardley and Jimi Rawlings, Costume designer Ella Fitzgerald, Lighting designer Sophie Parker, Music director Zachary Aleksander and SFX Designer David Wilson transfer Jean Betts’ play from what’s on the page to create an evocative stage world.
The production features a large cast, considering the tiny KXT stage, bring the characters vividly to life. The cast are uniformly good.
Brea Macey gives a powerful, exceptional as Ophelia. This is a very different Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Ophelia who was a passive figure and Jade Fuda gives a powerful, exceptional as a very different Ophelia. Shakespeare’s Ophelia is a passive figure, and easy prey for Hamlet who is consumed by his rage and need to revenge his father’s murder.
Macey’s Ophelia is fierce, a young woman exploring her identity as a spirited, defiant woman.
Elens Cassimatis is Ophelia’s dutiful, encouraging and sometime stealthy maid.
Shaw Cameron’s Hamlet is a selfish, chauvinistic, bullish man; a nasty piece of work; there is more unhinged than method in his madness. His fierceness makes it, at times, that one want to run out of the theatre.
Lucy Miller is great as Hamlet’s icy cold mother, Gertrude. Miller has a terrific scene, one which Betts has put in to the play from seemingly out of nowhere, where she confronts Hamlet with her own voracious libido. Is Betts implying that a large part of Hamlet’s problem that he is hung up about his mum’s sexuality?!
Hannah Raven as Rosencrantz and Julie Bettens as Guildenstern are the playful duo, made famous by Tom Stoppard’s classic comedy. The humour that they and the players, bring to the show gives us much needed comic relief from the intensity.
Richard Hilliar’s Polonius is a suitably dithery, ponderous old man.
Zachary Aleksander Laertes turns as vengeful as Hamlet when he sees how he has destroyed his sister.
Finlay Penrose plays St Joan, a great icon for feminists, and a historical figure that fits well in to Betts play.
After the show, my friend and I went back to my car. I was expecting to be berated by him as I drove him home. We usually go to a movie every Sunday afternoon, except for the occasional play, and he always lectures me, please can we see a comedy, a romance..,.I have enough drama in my life..
I was ready to cop it, to get a hammering, but the opposite happened. He told me that he loved it, loved the acting. Unbelievably, he told me that it was the play I have ever taken him to!
So there you go…You never can tell…
A Fingerless Theatre and Bakehouse Theatre co-production, Jean Betts and William Shakespeare’s play OPHELIA THINKS HARDER is playing the KXT on Broadway theatre corner City Road and Mountain Street, Ultimo until the 29th April 2025.
Production photographer Phil Erbacher
