Production Notes

One of the biggest challenges on this show came from working on a small stage -- how to convey the distance between Hamlet and Ophelia? In such a tiny area if they really wanted to be together all they had to do was take three steps in the right direction. To solve this problem the space was divided with a thin black scrim, which the actors believably portrayed as an impassable barrier (except during the dream sequence), and girdled with an abstract representation of the castle battlements suggesting the claustrophobic atmosphere and social limitations of the court. Neither barrier nor battlements were any hindrance to the lovers' letters which existed on a level of freedom denied their authors.

From the Program

"And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows"
Hamlet III(i)

The Secret Love Life of Ophelia is composed of a series of letters between the lovers. Berkoff provides one possible version of their famous relationship and in doing so cleverly manages to balance both his time and that of Shakespeare. The rhythm is iambic pentameter but the language is modern. The characters, especially the sexually confident Ophelia, are very much at home in the twenty-first century and yet he maintains certain qualities, for example in their attitudes to religion, which place them firmly in the Elizabethan world picture.

Any production tackling this play must not only respect Berkoff's scholarship and imagination but also figure out how to stage this intricate, dense, text driven work without ignoring completely the physical theatre for which Berkoff is justifiably famous.