Blog Response #8: The Long Beach Shakespeare Company's Production of Hamlet

The Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s portrayal of I.iii. of Hamlet was the most startling thing about their production to me. In other productions and interpretations of the play, both film and live theatrical versions, Ophelia and Polonius’ conversation in that scene is portrayed less as an argument and more as a diatribe. Ophelia, the young daughter of a courtier, is shown to be the pawn of both her brother and father’s plans. Laertes convinces her the relationship between her and Hamlet will come to no avail, and Polonius convinces her that there is only one thing on the prince’s mind.

In the LBSC’s production, however, this scene is portrayed as though a teenage girl is receiving advice from her protective brother and overbearing father. Although the play was clearly not a modernized version of the original text, in this moment it certainly did not seem like a representation. Ophelia is portrayed as a docile character who is simply caught in the crosshairs of the schemes of those around her in the written versions of Hamlet. She is confused and easily manipulated by the men in power around her, and most importantly she does not rebel against them: she accepts their words because she trusts them.

It is this trust and trickery by those she loves and trusts that leads Ophelia to madness. The LBSC production represented Ophelia as a rather rebellious and strong willed girl that suddenly went mad. Her transition from a rebel to an insane person makes little sense in the context of the LBSC play. Furthermore, their production does not represent the Ophelia that was Shakespeare’s original creation. For that Ophelia is a girl whose last words in that scene are, “I shall obey, my lord” (I.iii.135), and obey she shall, until her tragic death.