Seattle Shakespeare Company Presents HAMLET

Seattle Shakespeare Company opens its 20th anniversary season with a masterpiece of world drama - Hamlet.  Award-winning director John Langs returns after his much-lauded production of The Merchant of Venice to stage and rediscover this exalted classic.
 
Tickets are available now through the Seattle Shakespeare Company Box Office at 206-733-8222 as well as online at www.seattleshakespeare.org.
 
The Acting Company of Hamlet features 15 local Northwest actors with Darragh Kennan (Twelfth Night, Electra) taking on the title role.  Kennan is joined on stage by Charles Leggett (The Merchant of Venice, King Lear), Richard Ziman (Henry IV, parts 1 & 2, Chamber Richard III), Mary Ewald (Founding member of New City Theatre), David Pichette (Henry IV, parts 1 & 2), and Brenda Joyner (Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing - Wooden O).
 
In the play, after Prince Hamlet hears the otherworldly voice of his dead father demanding revenge, it ignites an intense whirlwind of intrigue and deception.  Pulled apart by love and duty, Hamlet struggles to make sense of his upended world as he attempts to pursue justice.
 
"I feel like Shakespeare wrote a human being in Hamlet that was looking to the future -- a spirit that was moving forward," said director John Langs on the first day of rehearsal.  "Shakespeare was sort of inventing a human being out there on the edge with this character, and all of these obstacles that Hamlet has to move through; so many people also have to move through in their lives.  At the end of the play I just feel that the loss of that spirit moving forward that gets eaten by a machine of politics and fear and greed is something we can all really relate to and respond to."
 
This will be the second time that Seattle Shakespeare Company will have produced Hamlet in its 20 year history.