Well Crafted RSC Hamnet Centers HerStory

Hamnet, a juggernaut that is a best selling 2020 novel, a 2025 Golden Globe winning film and a 2023 play now on stage at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in a Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation, takes the few facts of the life of Anne/Agnes Hathaway (the wife of William Shakespeare) and spins a compelling tale of Shakespeare’s family life and the inspiration for one of his greatest tragic plays. 

Writer Maggie O’Farrell, who wrote the novel and cowrote the screen play, begins with the  conjecture that Shakespeare and his wife had a deep and complex relationship that was marked by the tragic loss of their son which led to the writing of Hamlet. Her premise begins with calling the woman married to William Shakespeare by the name listed in her father’s will, not the more conventionally listed name of Anne. The couple married when she was 26 and he was 18 and already pregnant with their first child.  

While the film and the book unwind the tale chronologically, the RSC play, adapted by Lolita Chakrabati and directed by Erica Wyman, begins with the younger children already born and playing and then flashes back to how the couple met: this can be confusing if you have not read the book or seen the movie. There is a foreshadowing of the tragedy to come.  Both the book and the movie have the advantage of being able to use the point of view and inner dialogues of the characters: the play must show thoughts and feelings through actions or behaviors or dialogue and so we as audience may not feel as connected to Hamnet when he perishes from the plague because we have barely gotten to know him.   

What the play does show graphically and consistently is how much of William Shakespeare’s life was supported by women’s work.  The brilliant and sparse A frame set in the Chicago Shakes Yard Theater by Tom Piper is constantly being laid out, decorated and altered mostly by the women of the family who tirelessly cook and clean and shift the environment so that Will’s (played by Rory Alexander) domestic life is possible– when he is in London he lives in a type of sparse writer monk’s room, with a woman cleaning up after him.  All of the stories and their versions center Agnes’s (played by Kemi-Bo Jacobs) choices, habits and story as well as Agnes’s grief and her despair that William was not with her when Hamnet dies in agony: in this version the Shakespeare’s Hamlet play is him working through his own grief and gifting her the showing of it so that both of them can come to some sense of peace over this untimely and horrible death. 

It’s impossible to see the inner landscape of a modern marriage even one documented heavily on social media, more so a marriage 400 years ago with no paper trail beyond the scripts and birth and death and marriage and will documents: literally a limited trail of factual crumbs.  O’Farrell has fashioned these bits into a tale of complicated love and grief and the making of art. Even today couples must navigate long distance marriages because of work commitments and the nature of who the people are, how much more difficult in a time where travel was arduous and dangerous and communication took days and weeks instead of instants. 

The play hits all of the bullet points of the book and the movie, speeding through some of the more tangled and emotional moments, digging deep on the fraught relationships that Agnes had with her step mother and her mother in law. A standout relationship and performance by Troy Alexander who plays her brother Batholomew, who was her protector and sounding board. A sequel might be his story and his point of view. It was a man’s world and the men often used the women as pawns in their game. Bartholomew was a large steadying and supporting presence even as Agnes travels to London unannounced to see the play with her son’s name as the title. Agnes' anguish is raw in every version of the tale. 

We are so privileged to live in Chicago where an entire live RSC production can be imported whole and we can therefore see what Stratford and the West End sees.   This production is characterized by some mighty fine acting: Ajani Cabey’s Hamnet is convincing as a both a child and a young adult, Penny Layden’s Mary the mother in law is absolutely solid in her place in a man’s world and her conviction that Agnes needs civilizing and compliance. Another stellar performance is by Nigel Barret who plays Will’s difficult and violent father then morphs into a funny and sympathetic Will Kempe in Will’s company of actors in the second half. 

This story makes you think about all the unsung and unknown women of history who left no marks but birthed the children, kept the home and hearth, loved the men who were allowed to make the world what it is and lead lives we cannot know. 

Hamnet is playing in the Yard Theater at Chicago Shakespeare on Navy Pier Tuesdays through Sundays through March 8, 2026.  For tickets and information go to https://www.chicagoshakes.com/productions/2526-hamnet/

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