Tickets

Tickets can be purchased online at Eventbrite.

Tickets can be reserved by emailing truepennyplayers@hotmail.com or by calling 415.483.5508.

Tickets are $25.

All shows are at the Alcove Theater on the 5th floor of 414 Mason Street in San Francisco. Doors open at 7:30 and the show beings at 8:00pm. There will be a cash bar and one intermission.

The full dates are:

4/4 Fri

4/5 Sat

4/10 Thurs

4/11 Fri

4/12 Sat

4/17 Thurs

4/18 Fri

4/19 Sat

4/24 Thurs

4/25 Fri

4/26 Sat

 

Teaser

Cast

   Glenn Havlan - Claudius

Lynn Sotos - Gertrude

Jennifer Vo Le - Ophelia

Edwin Ortiz - Laertes

Terry Kolkey - Polonius

Richard Allen - Horatio

Kathy Mello - Player Queen, Gravedigger

Dan Mack - Ghost, Osric

Santiago Morales - Marcellus, Player

Eric Tippett - Francisco, Servant

Diagram of the action in Hamlet

By Charles C Schaeffer. From the Furness Theatrical Image Collection.

Examiner Review

Jennifer Vo Le plays Ophelia as the woman torn between love and the cruel machinery of court that demands the sacrifice of ideal on the altar of ambition. Jennifer Vo Le plays her first scenes as the weeping, wailing vulnerable young woman. In a complete reversal of personality, she plays her last two scenes tough, becoming a dangerous woman in a masterful performance that alone makes the evening worthwhile.

Terry Kolkey plays Polonius, the father of Ophelia, the cagy councilor trying to place a member of his family on the throne of Denmark. Edwin Ortiz plays her brother Laertes, a man with his own royal ambitions, with strength and intensity. 

Glenn Havlan anchors the play with his strong, serious, greedy and intelligent approach to the part of Claudius the king. Lynn Sotos plays Queen Gertrude with poise. 

Hamlet is played by Tim Gahan, a co-founder of Truepenny, with a ditsy surface that deliberately obscures the seriousness of his enterprise: to get the throne back and to avenge the murder of his father.

4/5 stars

examiner.com/review/hamlet

Open Air radio interview

This week on Open Air, host David Latulippe talks to actors John Fisher and Donald Currie about their respective roles as Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden in “The Habit of Art” at Theatre Rhinoceros;  Kevin Burke shares his directorial debut experience with “Hamlet” currently at the Alcove Theater in San Francisco. He’ll be joined by Tim Gahan, the actor playing Prince Hamlet, and Rob Zimmerman, director of the Beverly Hills Playhouse, San Francisco.  Hope Mohr, one of the Bay Area's best contemporary dance makers, talks about her home season at ODC, and San Francisco Chronicle's classical music critic Joshua Kosman offers his music picks for the month of April.  Open Air with David Latulippe, originally broadcast on April 3, 2014 at 1pm. Listen now or anytime...

kalw.org/term/kevin-burke

Saxo Grammaticus

 

This post is for Jessa. Thanks for your interest in the background of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The myth of Hamlet goes back almost a thousand years to Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. Around 1185 Saxo wrote down the legend of "Amleth", a child whose father is murdered by his brother. Ameleth feigns madness so he can survive long enough to grow up and avenge his father's murder. Saxo's myth is brutal, violent, and fascinating. Here's the passage that would later become Polonius' death in Shakespeare's play:

But Amleth had his antidote for the treachery. Afraid of being overheard by some eavesdropper, he at first resorted to his usual imbecile ways, and crowed like a noisy cock, beating his arms together to mimic the flapping of wings. Then he mounted the straw and began to swing his body and jump again and again, wishing to try if aught lurked there in hiding. Feeling a lump beneath his feet, he drove his sword into the spot, and impaled him who lay hid. Then he dragged him from his concealment and slew him. Then, cutting his body into morsels, he seethed it in boiling water, and flung it through the mouth of an open sewer for the swine to eat, bestrewing the stinking mire with his hapless limbs.

And here is the dramatic climax here Amleth gets his bloody revenge:

Then, to smooth the way more safely to his plot, he went to the lords and plied them heavily with draught upon draught, and drenched them all so deep in wine, that their feet were made feeble with drunkenness, and they turned to rest within the palace, making their bed where they had reveled. Then he saw they were in a fit state for his plots, and thought that here was a chance offered to do his purpose. So he took out of his bosom the stakes he had long ago prepared, and went into the building, where the ground lay covered with the bodies of the nobles wheezing off their sleep and their debauch. Then, cutting away its supports, he brought down the hanging his mother had knitted, which covered the inner as well as the outer walls of the hall. This he flung upon the snorers, and then applying the crooked stakes, he knotted and bound them up in such insoluble intricacy, that not one of the men beneath, however hard he might struggle, could contrive to rise.
After this he set fire to the palace. The flames spread, scattering the conflagration far and wide. It enveloped the whole dwelling, destroyed the palace, and burnt them all while they were either buried in deep sleep of vainly striving to arise.
Then he went to the chamber of Feng, who had before this been conducted by his train into his pavilion; plucked up a sword that chanced to be hanging to the bed, and planted his own in its place. Then, awakening his uncle, he told him that his nobles were perishing in the flames, and that Amleth was here, armed with his old crooks to help him, and thirsting to exact the vengeance, now long overdue, for his father's murder. Feng, on hearing this, leapt from his couch, but was cut down while, deprived of his own sword, he strove in vain to draw the strange one.