William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is not only the most read play in history, but it continues to inspire reinventions of or new perspectives on its tragedy, its existentialism and its characters.
Just among other playwrights these include Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” Paul Rudnick’s “I Hate Hamlet,” Lee Blessing’s “Fortinbras” and more recently James ljames’ “Fat Ham.”
Add Lauren Gunderson (“The Revolutionists,” “Silent Sky”) to the fold. But what makes this playwright’s fresh take on “Hamlet” different is its focus on the play’s otherwise victimized or reduced-to-secondary female characters, Queen Gertrude and Ophelia.
Gunderson’s “A Room in the Castle” reimagines the events of “Hamlet” through the lens of the Dane’s mother, Gertrude, widow of his slain father and now married to Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, and Ophelia, daughter of Polonius and Hamlet’s foredoomed romantic interest. The play was commissioned by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and co-produced with the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C. The two each produced the play early in 2025.
Moxie Theatre’s production of “A Room in the Castle,” directed by Kim Strassburger, is just its third staging and the play’s West Coast premiere. It stars Dianne Yvette as Queen Gertrude, Lyric Boothe as Ophelia and Vanessa Dinning as Anna, a nursemaid character created for the play by Gunderson.
Yvette calls her character “the same Gertrude, just from a different perspective. It’s her agency that you get to see. She’s not just being guided about by the men around her. She has a stake in where things are going.”
Dianne Yvette stars as Queen Gertrude in Moxie Theatre’s “A Room in the Castle.” (Moxie Theatre)
“Our (society’s) relationship to ‘Hamlet’ is one where people think they know the story because they’ve read it in high school or seen a production. We have this understanding of it. The women in this play get to live independently of it.”
The story takes place primarily in Ophelia’s chambers. It’s there that a familiarity and a friendship grows between herself and Gertrude, with nursemaid Anna acting as facilitator and protector of Ophelia.
Lyric Boothe stars as Ophelia in Moxie Theatre’s “A Room in the Castle.” (Moxie Theatre)
“You get to see how they (Gertrude and Ophelia) come together to support each other and get past each other’s walls to become truly friends,” said Boothe, who acknowledged she is relatively new to the “Hamlet” story. “That’s good,” she said, “because I didn’t have any preconceived notions about the characters. I wasn’t coming into this trying to be Ophelia from ‘Hamlet.’”
Gunderson’s Ophelia, said Boothe, “is a girl who is finding hope in every place that she can and creating that hope and positivity through music. She ends up getting hurt by a lot of people in her life, but does all that she can to overcome that hurt.”
This particular Gertrude, similarly, “knows her role,” Yvette said. “She knows what she’s supposed to do as a mother. This is an opportunity to have those moments of questioning ‘Am I the problem?’ I think one of the most beautiful things about this particular piece is that it’s women looking at their roles and how they fit into men’s expectations but also creating expectations for themselves.”
“A Room in the Castle” is written in contemporary language though it does include lines from “Hamlet” as written by the Bard. At Moxie, director Strassburger has created “an interactive world,” said Yvette. “It is quite tech-heavy but not heavy handed. It serves the theme that Kim has created.”
Vanessa Dinning stars as Anna in Moxie Theatre’s “A Room in the Castle.” (Moxie Theatre)
As for theme, “A Room in the Castle” has applications beyond the world of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” extending to today.
“You can’t call out the patriarchy without acknowledging how it has harmed women,” Yvette said, “how women have fallen prey to men and their own ambitions, men and their own desires and how holding men accountable is so much a part of what’s happening right now.
“There’s so much going on in the manosphere that I think women are empowered to walk away, to make a future for themselves where men are not centered. It’s not our job to fix them.”
‘A Room in the Castle’
When: Previews, Sunday, May 10, through May 14. Opens May 15 and runs through June 7. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
Where: Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., Suite N, Rolando
Tickets: $20-$88
Phone: (858) 598-7620
Online: moxietheatre.com