(Hamlet’s advice that the girl get herself to a nunnery gets a whole new context, and when Ophelia goes mad, she’s crazy like a fox.)Īlso Read: 'Straight Up' Film Review: Gay Boy Meets Straight Girl in Banter-Filled Comedy It is not betrayal and madness that bewitches this Ophelia but toxic masculinity.ĭirector Claire McCarthy (“The Waiting City”) and adapter Semi Chellas (“Mad Men”) give us an Elsinore Castle and its court that’s as handsomely mounted as any number of straightforward Shakespearean adaptations, but they cleverly tweak the proceedings to make us reexamine key moments from an entirely different angle.

“Hamlet” of course has its share of memorable characters - recall the bit player who claimed that the play was about a grave digger who meets a prince - but this provocative adaptation of Lisa Klein’s novel gives an oft-maligned character purpose and agency. We’ve had “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” and “Fortinbras Gets Drunk,” and now there’s “Ophelia,” an intelligent and gorgeous spin on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” from the point of view of the melancholy prince’s beloved.

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