A Room in the Castle, Folger Theatre

 In Kaja Dunn's production of A Room in the Castle currently playing at the Folger, playwright Lauren Gunderson presents the audience with her own vision of Hamlet and what might happen behind closed doors between the play's female characters. Who could the Queen and Ophelia be if given space to let their stories not center entirely around Hamlet? What would the story gain if one more woman was added in to reflect and refract the focus of the named women in the play? 

Sabrina Lynne Sawyer, Burgess Byrd, and Oneika Phillips in Folger Theatre's world premiere of A Room in the Castle, written by Lauren M. Gunderson, directed by Kaja Dunn, co-produced with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, on stage at the Folger Shakespeare Library, March 4-April 6, 2025. Photo by Erika Nizborski

In Gunderson's interpretation, while Hamlet agonizes off stage and out of sight, the women get a chance to come together and make their own plans, working first to his benefit and then for their own agendas. Gunderson has added a third woman, Ophelia's servant Anna, who acts as counselor and truth teller to both Ophelia and the Queen. Over the course of a beautifully brisk 90 minutes, the characters' relationships to each other, the court, Hamlet, and their own selves shift and evolve and become something new that is both true to the original story and its own creation.

Dunn's production sits squarely in the midst of the interplay of our conceptions of Hamlet and the modern world, with gothic arches and stone walls of Samantha Reno's set contrasting with Nicole Jescinth Smith's contemporary costumes so that the characters exist in their own specific world, out of step with the Elsinore of the play or our own real world space. 

The cast is excellent, with Oneika Phillips as a particularly regal queen who is evaluating her choices and every resulting consequence at every moment; Sabrina Lynne Sawyer as a particularly young Ophelia who must navigate the depths to which she is used as a pawn by everyone with power around her; and Burgess Byrd as Anna, who asserts herself with compassion and dignity and won't rest until she clears the way before her charge.

A Room in the Castle is a very specific kind of theatrical wish fulfillment, the sort of thought experiment that comes from sitting with a play and wondering not just what might be happening offstage, but what else might be true that the original playwright doesn't seem to be concerned with, and how much might be accomplished with just the smallest nudge. Room positions that nudge with Anna's presence in the background of story, and takes the opportunity to inject the first moment of contemporary wisdom into the play with her, but slowly reveals how much might be happening under the surface that went unexplored in Hamlet and builds to a climax that finds a new balance of hope and tragedy.