Review: MY BROOKLYN HAMLET now streaming through Scripps Ranch Theatre and Oceanside Theatre Company

It may be said that "Art imitates life" but one never hopes that their life imitates art, especially something akin to a Shakespearian tragedy. Yet, Brenda Adelman presents her one-woman show MY BROOKLYN HAMLET, which follows the way her life parallels HAMLET and shaped her childhood and life as an artist. Scripps Ranch Theatre and Oceanside Theatre Company are co-producing this streaming show, available through May 2nd.

Brenda grew up with parents who were passionate for each other- either passionately in love or in hate. Her father was a business owner, a womanizer, and a wannabe tough guy. Her mother was a bohemian artist who looked for art and inspiration all around the world. While these two had a magnetic relationship to each other, like magnets, they either were solidly attached together or repelling the other away from them. While this on-again, off-again, and emotionally manipulative relationship was what Brenda grew up with, she had no idea how dramatically it might end.

One day Brenda received a call and found out that her mother had been shot in the head, and that her father was the main suspect. While the police investigated her father remarried - to her mother's older sister. Making her aunt her new stepmother. Shakespeare would have loved this family.

Adelman's one-woman show finds her deftly moving, with great humor and energy from one character to another. From her father's gruff voice and New York accent to her mother's enthusiasm for art, beauty, and belief that Shakespeare made for good bedtime stories.

Originally conceived as a way to work through her family trauma, this hour-long play shows the comedy and the tragedy of a child dealing with living with narcissistic and manipulative people. The arts helped her process, grieve, and fully realize the life she had lived so far and the life she wants to live moving forward.

Directed by Charles Peters and filmed by Ted Leib, the streaming production has the intimate and energetic feel of a front-row theatre seat.

MY BROOKLYN HAMLET is available for streaming through May 2nd. Tickets ($22) are available at scrippsranchtheatre.org/mybrooklynhamlet

Ticket purchasers will receive a link allowing them to stream any time from noon Friday to noon Sunday

Photo Credit: Brenda Adelman, who wrote and performs "My Brooklyn Hamlet." Courtesy Scripps Ranch Theatre/Oceanside Theatre Company