Berkshire on Stage

There are few theatrical challenges more daunting than staging Hamlet. Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy has been performed, adapted, dissected, and reinterpreted so many times that it can be difficult to find something new to say about the Prince of Denmark. Yet Shakespeare & Company‘s current production, directed by Ariel Bock, succeeds precisely because it does not attempt to reinvent Hamlet. Instead, it brings the play back to its most fundamental question: What happens to a human being when grief, betrayal, and uncertainty make it impossible to know whom—or what—to trust?

The answer is a production that is intimate, emotionally immediate, and remarkably human.

For those unfamiliar with the play, Hamlet follows the young Prince of Denmark after the death of his father, the former king. When his father’s ghost appears and claims that he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who has since married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, the prince becomes consumed by questions of truth, revenge, and justice. Determined to uncover whether the ghost is telling the truth, Hamlet begins to manipulate those around him, ultimately setting in motion a chain of events that will destroy nearly everyone in his orbit.

It is a familiar story, but Shakespeare & Company’s production makes it feel immediate rather than museum-like. Staged in the Tina Packer Playhouse, the production leans on proximity. The audience is never allowed the comfortable distance of watching a “classic.” Instead, we are pulled into the same claustrophobic uncertainty that consumes the characters onstage.

Much of that success rests with David Gow in the title role. Hamlet is one of those characters who can easily become reduced to a collection of familiar traits; melancholy, indecisive, self-absorbed, and perpetually whining about his circumstances. Gow’s performance wisely avoids that trap. His Hamlet is not simply the stereotypical “melancholy Dane,” but a complicated young man trying and frequently failing to reconcile his conflicting emotions.

There is anger in him, certainly, but also humor, tenderness, intelligence, arrogance, affection, and genuine fear. Gow allows these contradictions to coexist, creating a Hamlet who feels less like an icon and more like a person. His famous soliloquies consequently become less like opportunities to recite Shakespeare’s greatest hits and more like windows into a mind actively struggling to understand itself. Even Hamlet’s cruelty (toward Ophelia, toward Polonius, toward Gertrude) reads not as calculation but as the flailing of someone who no longer trusts his own judgment. Gow lets us watch that unraveling happen in real time, which is a harder and more interesting choice than simply playing the character as already broken from the start.

That humanity becomes particularly important in Hamlet’s relationships with the people around him. His interactions with Ophelia, in particular, reveal the devastating consequences of his increasingly fractured worldview.

Yaala Muller gives Ophelia a beautifully controlled performance, one that becomes more affecting precisely because she does not overplay the character’s suffering. There is a palpable emotional intelligence in her performance. Ophelia is not simply a young woman who goes mad because Hamlet rejects her; she is someone caught between competing systems of authority, love, family loyalty, and political expectation. Muller makes us feel the pressure accumulating around her long before the character finally breaks beneath it. Her emotional transformation is one of the production’s most compelling arcs, and her scenes carry a quiet devastation that lingers well after they end. When her mad scenes finally arrive, they land with a specificity that resists the temptation toward pure spectacle. Muller finds Ophelia’s grief in small, precise gestures rather than in a single explosive breakdown, which makes the character’s disintegration feel less like a performance of madness and more like an actual mind coming apart.

Jonathan Epstein is equally impressive, doubling as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father and as Polonius. It would be easy to play Polonius solely as comic relief. The long-winded father whose tendency toward unsolicited advice makes him one of Shakespeare’s more recognizable fools. Epstein finds the person underneath the comedy. His Polonius can be funny, but his humor is grounded in recognizable human behavior. He is a father who believes he understands the world and, more importantly, believes he understands how to protect his children.

That makes his relationship with Ophelia particularly effective. Epstein conveys genuine affection beneath Polonius’s meddling, giving his eventual fate considerably more emotional weight. The tragedy becomes more painful because we have been allowed to see the humanity beneath the character’s comic exterior. His turn as the Ghost, by contrast, is unsettling and a reminder of how much restraint can accomplish in a play so often tempted toward theatrical excess.

The supporting cast similarly understands the importance of resisting caricature. “ranney,” as Claudius, plays the usurping king less as a mustache-twirling villain than as a man who has convinced himself his crimes were justified by circumstance. Kristin Wold’s Gertrude carries a similar ambiguity, caught between loyalty to her son and her devotion to her new husband, never quite letting the audience settle on how much she knows or suspects. Eddie Shields brings a hot-blooded urgency to Laertes that provides an effective foil to Hamlet’s more circling, ruminative energy, while J. Austyn Williamson’s Horatio anchors the production as its most steady, trustworthy presence and the one relationship Hamlet never seems to doubt. A.J. Baldwin moves nimbly among several smaller roles, giving each just enough distinct shading that the doubling never becomes confusing.

Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Horatio, and the other members of Elsinore’s court are not simply pieces being moved around Hamlet’s increasingly elaborate revenge scheme. They feel like people with their own motivations, fears, and desires. That approach reinforces one of the production’s central strengths that nobody exists entirely outside the emotional consequences of Hamlet’s actions.

Bock’s direction also allows Shakespeare’s language to breathe. Rather than treating the text as something that must be reverently preserved behind an invisible fourth wall, the production gives it physicality and immediacy. That physicality extends to the play’s violence where the climactic duel between Hamlet and Laertes, sharpened by tight, tense fight choreography, plays out with a real sense of danger rather than the polite theatricality that sometimes creeps into staged swordplay. The result is a Hamlet that feels accessible without ever diminishing the complexity of Shakespeare’s language.

The production’s technical design deserves particular praise. Omid Akbari’s scenic design establishes a space that feels both intimate and unstable, giving the court of Elsinore a sense of a world slightly off its foundations. Arthur Wilson’s costumes establish a world that feels simultaneously timeless and specific, helping define the distinctions between the members of the royal court while reinforcing the sense that appearances and identities are constantly shifting. In a play obsessed with performance, disguise, and the difference between what something appears to be and what it actually is, that visual language becomes especially effective.

Erika Johnson’s lighting design is similarly expressive. Light and shadow become more than atmospheric decoration. Here they contribute to the psychological landscape of the play. Moments of intimacy can suddenly give way to isolation, while darker scenes seem to close in around the characters. The lighting understands that Hamlet is, at its core, a play about people struggling to see clearly in a world where almost nothing is what it seems.

Brendan F. Doyle’s sound design provides another important layer. The appearances of the supernatural and the shifts in emotional intensity are supported without becoming overbearing, allowing sound to create unease and anticipation while keeping the focus firmly on the actors. In a production so dependent upon language, that restraint is particularly welcome. Susan Dibble’s movement work, too, threads through the production quietly while shaping the court’s physical rituals and the tension in Ophelia’s later scenes without ever calling attention to itself.

What makes this Hamlet successful is its refusal to let the play become merely an exercise in Shakespearean tradition. It is a tragedy about murder and revenge, but it is also about grief. It is about parents and children, romantic relationships, political power, and the devastating consequences of mistrust. Most importantly, it is about what happens when a person becomes so consumed by the need to uncover the truth that the search itself begins to destroy him.

David Gow’s Hamlet may be haunted by a ghost, but this production is less interested in the supernatural than in the very human ghosts that follow us.

Shakespeare & Company presents Hamlet. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Ariel Bock. Featuring David Gow as Hamlet; Yaala Muller as Ophelia/Osric; Jonathan Epstein as Ghost/Polonius/Captain/Gravedigger; “ranney” as Claudius; Eddie Shields as Barnardo/Laertes/Rosencrantz/Player; J. Austyn Williamson as Horatio/Player; Kristin Wold as Gertrude; and A.J. Baldwin as Marcellus/Guildenstern/Player/Gravedigger/Priest/Fortinbras. Scenic design by Omid Akbari. Costume design by Arthur Wilson. Lighting design by Erika Johnson. Sound design by Brendan F. Doyle. Movement/choreography by Susan Dibble. Fight choreography by Kevin G. Coleman. Vocal coach: Rory Hammond. Text coach: Normi Noel. Stage Manager: Josh Rodrigues. Assistant Stage Manager: Grace Goosman.

Hamlet runs August 13–30 at the Tina Packer Playhouse, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Massachusetts. Performances are at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets and additional information are available through Shakespeare & Company. https://shakespeare.org/shows/2026/hamlet/