Chicago Reader49%
Oak Park Festival Theatre’s first season of rotating rep is a mixed bag 75%
By Kelly Kleiman86%
7/9/2026, 7:24:19 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 17 faulty reasoning types, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, Halo Effect, and Representativeness Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 18.2% saturation with 87 hits. Analysis detected 586 faulty-reasoning hits from 477 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 67.9% and a BS Rank of 75% (4,968 of 19,902 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 75.00% of the article peer group.
<em>Hamlet</em> has many layers, but it’s still uncommon for a production to find in it something truly new: the play’s very familiarity tends to obscure its meaning.
But the Oak Park Festival Theatre version, directed by artistic director Peter G.
Andersen, takes a speech which has always seemed superfluous and uses it to illuminate the play’s central problem.
<em>Hamlet</em>
Runs in rotating rep with <em>The Importance of Being Earnest </em>through 8/15 (see website for complete schedule); Austin Gardens, 167 Forest, Oak Park, oakparkfestival.com, $40 ($30 seniors, $15 students, $5 children under 12)
When Hamlet asks the Lead Player to recite a speech about Pyrrhus and Priam, I’ve always checked out: Who cares?
But as presented by Charls Sedgwick Hall (who also plays the Ghost and the Gravedigger), it’s clear that Pyrrhus did what Hamlet is doing: stopping in the midst of a necessary killing to think about it some more.
The speech catches the prince’s conscience.
Hamlet, played with extraordinary skill and energy by Drew Bos, takes us on his journey to figure out that “the readiness is all.”
Josh Carpenter is the most thoroughly smarmy Claudius I have ever seen in the role: a high compliment!
Both Laertes and Polonius are played by women, which does no harm, though it’s not obvious why the choice was made.
The minor characters—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Horatio, even the palace guard—are completely committed to their roles.
The script has been edited tightly and is delivered briskly but with great clarity.
The only weakness in the production is its treatment of Gertrude (Jodi Gage).
Though Hamlet berates her, she seems less upset than one would be after learning one’s husband killed his predecessor; and once Hamlet starts talking to the Ghost, she seems content to explain the whole encounter with “He’s mad!
He’s mad!”
It’s an unsatisfactory resolution to a pivotal scene.
Taylor Pfenning designed the excellent contemporary dress.
Evan Frank’s set design is more puzzling: why are there three headless mannequins upstage?
But these are quibbles: this <em>Hamlet</em> is well worth seeing.
<em>The Importance of Being Earnest</em>, unfortunately, is not.
Director Kathryn Walsh seems to be under the mistaken impression that the play is a farce, so she has her actors mugging and striking poses all over Oscar Wilde’s text.
But Wilde was writing a satire of the manners and morals of upper-class England, a fact best conveyed (and funniest) when his characters are portrayed with the dead self-seriousness of the people being lampooned.
The over-the-top bits would have enhanced any production of <em>Charley’s Aunt</em> but made for a leaden evening of <em>Earnest</em>.
<em>The Importance of Being Earnest</em>
Runs in rotating rep with <em>Hamlet </em>through 8/14 (see website for complete schedule); Austin Gardens, 167 Forest, Oak Park, oakparkfestival.com, $40 ($30 seniors, $15 students, $5 children under 12)
Analysis
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