Presented by Reduced Shakespeare Company
Written and Directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor
Backdrop Design: Tim Holstag
Costume Design: Freya Marcelius
Sound Design: Matthew Cowell and Zack Moore
Stage Manager: Elaine Randolph
Original Circus Music Composed by Peter Bufano; performed by Cirkestra
Starring Geoffrey Barnes, Doug Harvey, and Austin Tichenor

March 12 – 30, 2025
Merrimack Repertory Theatre
50 E Merrimack St
Lowell, MA 01852

Virtual playbill 

Critique by Craig Idlebrook

90 minutes with a 15-minute intermission

Some works on stage and film can grip you in the first moments and never let go. Shakespeare’s script for The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is one such play. It is gripping even though a lot of nothing happens throughout most of it because of the titular character’s indecision. It is largely a pensive mood study, and the characters often dither to Seinfeldian levels.

Other works of stage and film can provide wall-to-wall action and frenetic energy and never capture your attention. This is the case with the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Comedy of Hamlet (a Prequel) playing at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. It tries to add too many crowd-pleasing comedic elements but ends up feeling like a smoothie you keep tinkering with until the final taste is indistinguishable.

The plot can be hard to discern but draws on many thread-worn comedic devices. Hamlet begins as a decisive young man, striving to ultimately fill his father’s shoes as king. However, the King seems to be going through a midlife crisis and wants Hamlet to live out his own dream as a performer on the stage. The King and Lilith, Ophelia’s mother, may want to keep Hamlet and Ophelia apart, but not for the reasons we traditionally think. Also, a nunnery is about to close, and only a zany variety show can raise the money to save it.

Sprinkled within this slight script is a lot of foreshadowing of future events for the characters, several ham-fisted attempts to subvert the “To be or not to be” speech, a few incongruous references to other Shakespeare plays and the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart, and some forgettable songs. Most of the dialogue is delivered in a Seussian-feeling rhyme scheme that the script abandons for much of the second act.

Geoffrey Barnes, Doug Harvey, and Austin Tichenor play multiple parts in this production.
Tichenor and co-director Reed Martin, who also co-wrote the script, fail to create tempo for this
play, instead opting for the actors to push each line as if it is the most important and most funny.
As a result, legitimate beats of comedy get lost, while other forced beats die excruciatingly on
stage. The actors give it their all, but only Geoffrey Barnes can build an authentic connection
with the crowd under these circumstances.

In short, this play simply doesn’t work. The Reduced Shakespeare Company has enjoyed great comedic success by boiling down expansive and complex works into tightly-focused bits of comedy. This script fails by taking a maximalist approach.

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