Theatre for a New Audience

Theatre for a New Audience's Hamlet featuring Christian Camargo in the title role and staged by David Esbjornson explores a young prince deeply unsettled about his future. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Shakespeare's Denmark was a bloody and imperial nation, outwardly repressed and inwardly passionate and open to mysticism and the supernatural.

Hamlet is caught between avenging his father's murder and whether revenge is moral. It is easy to look to our own times to see another incarnation of Hamlet emerging out of a world more and more defined by extremism and marked by an acceleration of revenge thinking. Hamlet's uncertainty mirrors our own. There are more Hamlets than have ever existed on this planet. Fearful of being weak yet not certain of the "right" action even while the actions of the "righteous" seem to know no limits.

Within the play's politics is a profound story of men and women. Hamlet's love of Gertrude, his mother, cannot erase his profound contempt for what he considers her lust. Hamlet's obsession with Gertrude's sexuality goes so far as to destroy his chances for his own intimacy with Ophelia.

Christian Camargo, who was powerful in the title role in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Coriolanus, returns to play Hamlet. Mr. Camargo played opposite Michael Gambon on Broadway in Skylight, with Mark Rylance at London's Shakespeare's Globe and played Rudy Cooper in the Showtime drama, Dexter. This fall, prior to Hamlet, Mr. Camargo will appear on Broadway in Arthur Miller's All My Sons directed by Simon McBurney.

David Esbjornson is the Artistic Director of the Tony Award winning Seattle Repertory Theatre. Among his many credits, he has staged Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte, Edward Albee's Tony Award-winning play The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? on Broadway and the acclaimed revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. For seven years, Mr. Esbjornson led Classic Stage Company where his productions included Thérèse Raquin (Obie Award for Direction), The Entertainer (Drama League Nomination Best Revival) and Endgame by Samuel Beckett (Drama Desk Nomination Best Revival).