Writer: Brock Looser
Director: Avery Looser
The most famous image of Ophelia is John Everett Millais’ painting in the Tate Britain. As the tragic heroine drowns in the river, her soft hands half-aloft in surrender, her mouth open in relief, she is surprised yet peaceful. It’s no wonder that performer and writer Brock Looser wears a Tate t-shirt in her update of Hamlet.
As the publicity for too much of water explains, while Hamlet is given 1,506 lines in Shakespeare’s original, Ophelia has only 173. This 55-minute play, showing at Camden Fringe’s SHAKEFEST at the Old Red Lion, seeks, then, to give words to the silenced character. And yet, despite a winning performance, Looser reveals few new insights into Ophelia.
We are now in present-day America. Ophelia is waiting for her talkative brother to return home from college. She tells us that we are the imaginary audience to whom Hamlet delivered his “To be or not to be” soliloquy. We’ve heard his side of the story; now it’s time to listen to hers.
With the help of dolls, she tells us about her childhood and the river that flows near her family’s house. Her mother, before she died suddenly from an aggressive cancer, used to love sitting by the river. It’s the river to which Ophelia will return, dumped by her lover, who also killed her father.
But frustratingly, we learn little of the young Ophelia apart from that she once played volleyball at school. We already know that she is traumatised by a double grief; that of losing Hamlet and then her father. The voice of Hamlet telling her that he never loved her sounds like that of a devil. In current parlance, it could be said that Hamlet gaslighted Ophelia, but sensibly, Looser never uses that term.
Nevertheless, too much of water is a gripping play, and Looser sprinkles enough lines from the original into her monologue. Director Avery Looser ensures that there is nothing static about it either, and Emma Haines’ sound design creates drama, too.
For a play written in the 2020s, it’s surprising that Looser hasn’t given Ophelia more agency. She remains undone by men.
Runs until 3 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
