Ari is an aspiring actor, looking to audition for a role in Hamlet. She’s not interested in any of the
female parts, though. She is going to walk into that audition room and nail
the Prince of Denmark. Or Claudius. Or, at least, the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
While she practices for her audition, Ari is interrupted by
her domineering husband Ben, barking orders over the phone. He sends around an
assistant, Rachel, to fetch some paperwork for an upcoming court appearance and
Ari quickly decides to put her dreams on hold. Acting is frivolous, Ben tells
her. But Rachel doesn’t agree.
Ophelia’s Inner
Monologue is a dense show that deconstructs the character of Ophelia in a
clever, insightful and theatrically inventive way. If Ari cannot yet play
Hamlet, maybe Rachel can help her find the essence of his mistreated
girlfriend.
Ari and Rachel decide to improvise, to let Ari get into
Ophelia’s head and understand her better. Rachel chooses to play the ghost of
Ophelia’s mother and Ari must deal with the grief in her past to understand her
present relationships with father Polonius and her boyfriend, the mad Prince.
This show has contemporary resonances about emotional trauma
and gaslighting and being “ghosted” but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.
Writer/director/star Aridhi Anderson plays with theatrical convention, while
digging deeply into gender politics and the reverence we pay to dated classics.
The show feels a little long and it could definitely benefit
from an outside eye to help refine and tighten it. Anderson is a captivating
performer – and singer – who could use some help with the Shakespeare itself,
but doesn’t miss a beat in deconstructing the text.
It packs a lot into its running time, maybe too much, but it’s
full of the enthusiasm of young performers and theatremakers.
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