The show description interested me from the outset. It began, "Abandoned, mourning and mad. Who is Shakespeare's Ophelia? Who are the women who play her?" The story of this show was that of a young composer. Her task was to adapt Ophelia's songs for a contemporary production of Hamlet. She had to make sense of the character, who transitions in the play from lovely and lucid through insanity to her own death. The composer's job--to try to get inside Ophelia's head, to hear her voice.
The cast consisted of eleven young ladies--the composer and ten Ophelias. Each Ophelia was clad in a white gown--interchangeable but different, as if each represented a slightly different facet of a complex persona. As we entered the room, one Ophelia was lying prone on the stage, covered with flowers, simulating the dead Ophelia at her funeral. The remaining Ophelias entered and circled the balcony to deliver together Gertrude's description of Ophelia's death. From my seat, on the floor below the balcony, I was unable to see the entire cast above. It made me wish I had chosen a spot more in the center of the room, but there is something rather eerie about hearing the voice above and not seeing the person.
Following that introduction, one of the Ophelias came downstairs to sing the first song, "How Should I Your True Love Know." She began and it immediately brought chills. This was not the typical staging of an insane Ophelia, singing poorly. The eleven cast members were all music students with opera-quality voices. The music was breathtaking, with each young lady adding to the production.
The songs included in the hour-long production were largely the songs from Hamlet. There were traditional English-language versions. There were German-language versions from Brahms and Wagner. There was a French piece entitled La mort d'Ophelie by Berlioz. The final song was "Spring" from Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia by Heggie. Translations for the foreign-language versions were provided on the playbill, but I was not about to read them and miss seeing the live performance. It reminded me of the opera music scene from the film, The Shawshank Redemption. I didn't know exactly what each word meant, but the emotion was unmistakable.
One particularly striking scene occurred near the end. The Ophelias each froze in a different expression, representing particular moods and instances of the character. The composer, while singing, unfroze each; her own journey seemingly had led her to the words and meaning to give the character life. The production concluded with a very fitting curtain call of all eleven actresses on stage together. A well-deserved bow indeed!
Unfortunately, a couple of intoxicated patrons sitting near me carried on much of the night as if they were in a bar. They also spent most of the evening drawing with crayons on the paper table cover. At least they weren't driving home, as they loudly announced on their way out. Perhaps they should have stayed home in the first place!
I must say that this production was one of the most impressive I have seen at the Fringe Festival. Everything about it (except the drunken customers) combined for a first-rate piece of entertainment. Bravo to the director, music director, and cast members on a job extremely well done!
