Richard Grayson, author of Who Will Kiss the Pig: Sex Stories for Teens, filed this report about the 12 Ophelias at the McCarren Park Pool. We are grateful.
by Richard Grayson: At 7:45 p.m. Saturday, we walked up Lorimer Street to the McCarren Park pool, where a small crowd of strangely non-hipster-looking humans had gathered. They were there, as we were, to see “12 Ophelias,” a play with lyrics by Caridad Svich and music written and performed by the excellent bluegrass band The Jones Street Boys. This was a preview of the production conceived and designed by the Brooklyn-based Woodshed Collective and directed by Teddy Bergman, who also did the famous Hell House, about the agonies that await the unborn-again.
We were told that the night was only the second “12 Ophelias” preview and glitches were to be expected. The main ones were with the body mikes, which worked sporadically at times for a couple of performers, but their voices carried well enough so that we, at least, heard them at all times.
“12 Ophelias” is a surreal take on Hamlet in which Ophelia (Pepper Binkley) rises from her pond, undrowned, and tries to deal with her past in a backwoods Appalachian version of Elsinore. Hey, they do say regional Appalachian English is the closest today’s Anglophones come to the early modern English of Elizabethan times.
In this shantytown-Deliverance setting, trashy-flashy but regal Gertrude (Kate Benson) presides over a brothel; Rosencranz (Grace McLean) and Guildenstern (Preston Martin) are an antic genderqueer pair of silly hillbillies; Horatio (Ben Beckley) is a brutal, coarse backwoodsman sexually involved with the hooker Mina (an engaging Jocelyn Kuritsky) – and apparently Gertrude herself; and then there’s Rude Boy, a slovenly Ozarks Hamlet in a filthy wifebeater with a black eye and a lot of attitude.
This sounds like it could be either really terrible or really wonderful. We were a little concerned at first, but soon the performances — and the surprisingly haunting songs — shot it over into the "really wonderful" category.
Shakespeare’s language is both mocked (R & G do a deliciously wicked parody of the final meeting between the prince and Ophelia in Hamlet) and transformed so that, even with all the countrified expressions and Appalachian diction, it becomes eloquent in conveying the characters’ struggle to reconcile past mistakes and burdens and in exploring the line between madness and passion.
The cast was uniformly outstanding, with Binkley, McLean and Martin having some amazing moments; the musical performances by the cast and The Jones Street Boys, when not hampered by sound-system problems, were strong.
According to its website, the mission of Woodshed Collective is to "create a tangible, immersive world" for audiences, by creating interactive performance pieces in which all members of the Collective are involved in "all aspects of production, from concept development to direction and design."
The pool will be host to more performances of “12 Ophelias” at 8 p.m. on July 16, 18-19, 23-24, 26 and 30-31. August performances include Aug. 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 16 and 20-22. Setting this production in the middle of the empty pool as dusk turned to night worked really well. As we walked home under a gibbous moon, we felt happy that we’d gone
“Really wonderful” is definitely the right column. I attended 12 Ophelias soon after it opened and was awed by the ingenuity and electricity onstage. From the moment one takes a seat, one enters another world. The dynamic choreography sustains that feeling; the performances capture and keep the viewer’s emotions at fever-pitch.
12 Ophelias is no retelling of Hamlet: it’s a reexamination of its doomed, celebrated love story. It’s also a commentary on what it means to be a woman then and now…the expectations and inevitabilities involved, and also the different choices one might make. Indeed, to experience 12 Ophelias is to be granted that elusive “what if?” moment.
Individual performances that popped… Binkley entranced as Ophelia brought back from the water. Her delivery was at once charged and graceful. She captivated the audience with a fluid physicality that mirrored the scene of her rebirth. No small feat: she excelled at presenting both youthful dreams and hard-won wisdom.
Cozzens excelled as Rude Boy and presented a thought-provoking revisitation of the iconic figure of Hamlet: who was he really? How aware? How self-aware? How mature…or, alternately, young?
Gertrude, Rosencranz and Guildenstern were a dynamic trio. The music of The Jones Street Boys provided a sensational backdrop. In short, it was a terrific evening. Don’t think twice about attending.