Irondale to Stage HAMLET/THE FURIES This Spring in Brooklyn

Irondale has announced Hamlet/The Furies, a two-act evening running April 10 through May 16, with performances Wednesday through Saturday. Directed by Irondale Artistic Director Jim Niesen, the production brings together William Shakespeare's Hamlet as Act I and The Furies, drawn from Aeschylus's Oresteia, as Act II, performed by the same ensemble across both works in a single, continuous theatrical event.

Rather than presenting the plays as historical artifacts, Irondale uses them as source material - a pair of ancient cautionary tales - to examine the present moment. Written more than 2,000 years apart, these stories are woven together to explore how societies respond when power is contested, institutions falter, and the line between justice and revenge begins to blur. In this framing, Hamlet and The Furies become a lens for examining what feels "rotten" in the United States today: the pressures that give rise to revolution, the longing for accountability, and the fragile promise of systems meant to deliver justice, but do so only for some and often, under power rather than principle.

Hamlet places the audience inside the private reckoning of a son carrying the weight of a crime he did not commit, trapped between moral clarity and action in a world already coming apart. The Furies widens the focus from one family to an entire society, examining a sudden shift from revenge-based justice to a civic legal system. Irondale treats this moment not as a clean triumph, but as a troubling handoff of power, suggesting that order is achieved through pressure and persuasion rather than true consent, and that the new system carries built-in biases about whose lives and voices matter most. The result is an uneasy peace that asks whether justice has truly been achieved, or simply managed.

"For me, these plays aren't about the past, they're about patterns we keep repeating," says Director Jim Niesen. "Hamlet is about carrying a wound inside a broken system. The Furies asks what happens when a society tries to build something new on top of that damage. When you put them together, you start to see revolution, justice, and accountability not as abstract ideas, but as lived, human struggles that never land in a neat or comfortable place."

Performed by a small ensemble of six actors, each taking on multiple roles across both works, the production emphasizes continuity, transformation, and collective responsibility. The staging moves fluidly across Irondale's 8,000-square-foot space and surrounding the audience with a shifting theatrical landscape that mirrors the instability of the worlds unfolding onstage.

"Our work at Irondale has always been about creating a public space for shared inquiry," adds Terry Greiss, Executive Director of Irondale. "These plays don't offer solutions. They offer a chance to sit together inside difficult questions about power, justice, and what it means to build a society that claims to move beyond violence, even when the past is still very much alive."

For over 40 years, Irondale has been a cornerstone of New York City's ensemble theatre movement, known for research-based, collaborative work that bridges classical texts and contemporary experience. Hamlet/The Furies continues that tradition, staging a conversation between eras and inviting audiences into a single night of theater that treats the past as a warning, the present as a reckoning, and the future as an open, unsettled question.

PERFORMANCE DETAILS

Preview performances of Hamlet/The Furies will be held Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 11, with opening night April 15. Offering over 20 performances, the production will close Saturday, May 16. Performances will be held on Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30pm.

Tickets start at $15 and are available at https://www.irondale.org/on-stage/hamlet-the-furies

VENUE INFORMATION

The Space at Irondale, located at 85 South Oxford Street in Brooklyn, New York.