Playing Ophelia, the actor (in most productions, a woman) is quite liberating. I have played her thr
Playing Ophelia, the actor (in most productions, a woman) is quite liberating. I have played her three times: at 19, at 27, at 48.Underlying the reserved, Danish noblewoman simmers the sexy, insane girlfriend of Hamlet (who has his own demons and mental incapacities). She delights in their love and potential passion and flirts with the prince with perfect subtlety, though he keeps her guessing. The subtext of their sexual romps and favors are woven throughout the play. ‘Get thee to a nunnery,’ Hamlet tells Ophelia during a conversation as she is too alluring and too much a tempting distraction for a man who might be king.Ophelia is insatiable and in the end, falls victim to lovesickness, and accidentally falls from a willow into a brook, and drowns.But a theme of Hamlet is drowning. In power; in rue (an herb, and a word for “regret”); in love; in miscommunication or misunderstanding; in worry. Never have I had so much performance freedom than to play a single woman living in constant states of arousal in its various forms.Dear, sweet Ophelia. Agent 355 -- source link