NPX Weekly Round-Up: Ophelia by Meghan Brown
The sequel to Hamlet I never knew I needed, plus three other plays to read this week!
NOTE: May really snuck up on me! I unfortunately was not able to write a monthly book review. To make up for it, I’ll be posting something else imminently, more of a Playwright Pit Stop vibe. Thank you for your understanding. Enjoy!
I had a great time this week exploring plays. I’ve learned the best way to find cool work is to find a playwright you like and then see what they recommended. You’ll find a gold mine! I think I have enough plays in my library now to last the rest of the year.
But what in particular drew me to Ophelia by Meghan Brown? The recommendation left by a person named Darcy who said, “Stop everything and read this. Ophelia is so funny passionate and Meghan Brown has such a grace with her words that by the time you've finished reading Ophelia you'll only be hungry for more…”
Grace with words? Shakespeare? Purgatory? Color me intrigued.
Here’s the official summary of Ophelia from NPX:
A furious Ophelia is reunited with Hamlet after 800 years in a Purgatory aquarium.
Yep, that’s it. And really, it’s all you need to know. If this doesn’t interest you, I think we have different taste in plays!
Before we continue, the content warnings for this play are: discussions of death, suicide, and murder; relationship trauma.
This fantastically paced one act gives us insight not only into the characters of Hamlet and Ophelia, but also the playwright’s picture of the afterlife. In only thirty pages, we learn how this afterlife works, why Ophelia and Hamlet are where they are, and get some more solid confirmation on a few speculative questions the original Hamlet raises. Namely, we learn if Ophelia indeed committed suicide…or not.
Let me give you a quick rundown of the world this play takes place in. Everything will make much more sense after that.
There seem to be ten levels— Level 10 being “hell” and Level 1 being “The Great White Light” where the souls are effectively so unburdened they are sort of reabsorbed into the universe in a very end-of-The-Good-Place way. Hamlet is on Level 3, which Ophelia says is where “The Justified” go. Ophelia is in Level 5, which is where the “unsorted” go. Ophelia says this is where people who are unbaptized or whose deaths were ambiguous seem to be. However, one can seemingly appeal their afterlife sentence and get moved up a level or so, which Hamlet admits to doing. However, you must do so before your “file” expires.
Make sense? Cool. Let’s get into the actual play.
Something that surprised me at first, but later made so much sense, is that Ophelia is obsessed with fish. She has aquariums all over her apartment, and she works in an aquarium on her level of the after life (because Purgatory, it seems, it just the most mundane and boring version of life). Otherwise, her apartment is pretty normal when all of a sudden, Hamlet is there.
Needless to say, she is not happy to see him.
Hamlet wants to “make amends”. Ophelia, after all that Hamlet did to her (namely killing her father and also pretending to be insane), is not about it. She lets him have it, and she makes some amazingly good and eloquent points. My favorite was probably, “You killed my father. The same crime you were so intent on avenging. But I guess since it was my father, it didn’t matter. Since it was my useless, insignificant life, it didn’t matter. But you know what? I think I’m starting to get it. Because now, I look at you and I realize: You don’t matter.”
Just. Chills. Because she’s “The Justified” in her eyes here, and if you’re a fem person who read Hamlet, she probably is in your eyes, too.
This play definitely isn’t a Hamlet-hating treatise, though. Hamlet truly wants to redeem himself, genuinely stills believes himself in love with Ophelia, and wants to help her. We see this when Hamlet blurts out his main reason for visiting: Ophelia’s file is expiring at midnight. If she wants to get to a higher level, she needs to admit that she didn’t kill herself…unless, perhaps, she did.
I don’t want to tell you any more, because it’ll ruin the beautiful ending that Brown has created. Go read it, truly.
I think the biggest lesson I took from reading this play was that of world-building. In thirty pages or so, I gleaned the rules of this very particular world without the characters info dumping or exposition-ing at me. The natural rules of the world were seamlessly integrated into natural and dynamic dialogue. In about a third of the pages of a full length play, I felt I knew exactly where this story was occurring and how those very specific circumstances affected the characters and the story. I’m definitely going to read this again and see if I can pin point some specific techniques that Brown employs to do this (or at least, put this lesson into more actionable terms).
Here is my official recommendation from NPX:
As a troubled young woman, I really related to Ophelia. It was a very powerful and healing experience to read this play and hear from the character herself what exactly happened at the end of her life. Not only was this an honest and emotional work, it had moments of levity too! Ophelia and Hamlet's squabbling certainly has its moments where you can't help but laugh at the absurdity. Would love to see this staged one day!
Have you read this play? Let me know your thoughts by replying to this email or messaging me on the SubStack app!
Here are three other plays I’m excited about this week:
ELEANOR by Martha Patterson
POSTPARTUM by Jillian Blevins
A Sign You Were Alive by Rebecca Kane
Want me to read one of these plays? Or, maybe, do you want me to read yours? Let me know by replying to this email! I’ll happily add your selection to the queue.
Happy reading!
~Brynn