Vancouver audiences will experience Hamlet in a new way when the play opens October 30^th at The Shop theatre. Libby Osler—a Bowen Island-born, New York-trained actor—will play a young, female Hamlet in a production where four major male characters have been rewritten as women. “We weren’t trying to force any gender switches,” Kailey Spear, one of the play’s directors, told me. “Hamlet’s struggles are not gender-specific, so she works well as a male or female character, whereas Ophelia is judged in terms of her beauty and her virtue, which is a very female experience.”

I went to the theatre to observe the rehearsal of a heated scene between Hamlet and her lover, Ophelia. The Shop is a warehouse-style space that was once used as a prop workshop for the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and has since been outfitted with plush, red velvet seats. Sam Spear—Kailey’s identical twin sister and the play’s co-director—stretched across two rows of seats, watching the scene unfold.

“I did love you once,” Hamlet said, her expression tormented, her hands evading Ophelia’s grasping ones. “Indeed, you made me believe so,” Ophelia replied, hopeful. Hamlet pulled her close and kissed her, then pushed her away. By scene’s end she’d left Ophelia alone on the stage, rejected and woeful. Their storm of emotions reminded me of my worst breakup, my simultaneous desire to flee and to inflict pain, to receive and reject love.

“The themes that come through in Hamlet are ones people can still connect to; the characters and their motivations are recognizable,” Sam told me. The Spears have edited Shakespeare’s script for length and changed pronouns to reflect characters’ gender switches, but otherwise kept Shakespeare’s script intact. Though audiences may not recognize some of the play’s language, its visual elements—the setting and costumes—will be familiar. This production is set in what Sam calls a fictitious “today-esque” world, where the media follows the Danish royal characters as though they’re Hollywood celebs. The scene between Hamlet and Ophelia unfolds in a nightclub setting, and tabloid covers featuring the play’s characters will be projected on screens to contextualize events.

In the play, Hamlet returns to Denmark from university after her father, the King of Denmark, dies. Once home, she finds that her mother has remarried—to her uncle, who her father’s ghost reveals as his murderer. Hamlet must then avenge her father’s death while navigating an intricate web of relationships. In traditional productions, where Hamlet is male, social disapproval of the character’s relationship with Ophelia is rooted in class tensions; in this one, the lovers’ sexuality is the source of controversy.

After rehearsal, I spoke with Osler, who sees similarities between our world and that of the play. “The marriage [between Hamlet’s uncle and mother] is used to distract Denmark’s citizens from their country’s political stability,” she said, and noted that celebrity news is an equivalent distraction in our world today. “We’re inundated with it.” Osler described her character as distrustful of appearances; “She’s always after our obsession with the superficial. Hamlet is saying to people”—here, she tapped the table for emphasis—“look a little closer.”

In the future, the Spear sisters plan to create a film version of Hamlet, with an actor like Osler as the lead. “Hamlet’s a great role,” Sam told me, “she’s a complex and dynamic character. Unlike token strong female characters in mainstream film and television, who are so strong and flawless that they never fail, Hamlet is very flawed, but trying to use her strength to fight through her faults. We want to give audiences an opportunity to see a female actor play that kind of character.”

Hamlet
Directors: Kailey and Sam Spear
Opens October 30^th at The Shop theatre (125 East 2^nd Ave) and runs until November 9^th. Preview October 29^th. 

Tickets available from Brown Paper Tickets. More info available on Facebook. 

– Story by Kyla Jamieson. Look out for Kyla’s profile of Libby Osler in Sad Mag’s forthcoming Movement issue, on stands March 2015.