Calista Kiloh
Nottingham New Theatre’s (NNT) 2026 Spring Season continues with the Shakespeare classic, Hamlet. Ahead of their opening show on Thursday 18th, an Impact writer interviewed the production team for NNT’s Hamlet – Sienna Lorenz (Director), Grace Morrell (Producer), Sophie-Ella Hill (Producer) and Arwyn Clayton (Assistant Director) – as well as cast members Jess Verby (Hamlet), Emma Scorah (Ophelia) and Kayla Sibanda (Claudius/Ghost).
What should audiences expect from this version of Hamlet?
Sienna: I think a Gothic-esque production mixed with music, so it’s kind of eerie. Haunting is the major vibe.
On the production’s Instagram, you have this music motif going on, with the vinyl as your profile picture and the iPod templates to introduce yourselves. Obviously, music is so integral to art, and it kind of gives this grungy vibe, but is that it? Is there any more significance to it?
Sienna: Yeah, music is heavily intertwined throughout the performance. There’s at least one song in every scene that’s played in the background. It’s all Radiohead music, which explains the grungy vibe. We wanted to emphasise that in the publicity to just get people a bit more interested in the grungy atmosphere of it.
How did the production come about? How did you guys get together?
Sienna: I watched a production of Hamlet at the RSC back in August. Hamlet’s always been my favourite play in general. I knew that I really wanted to put it on at [Nottingham New Theatre] and I thought it would be so fun to do an extended version of Hamlet with the Radiohead music, but not just the ‘Hail to the Thief’ album and incorporate Radiohead songs from all the albums throughout it. So I proposed it, and obviously got accepted, and I got my wonderful team.
The story of Hamlet (as goes for any Shakespeare) is a story that has been told and retold for hundreds of years. How do you think Hamlet, and specifically your version of Hamlet, speaks to a modern audience?
Sienna: Hamlet, in general, has a lot of modern themes in it, like grief, anger, and revenge. Especially in a modern world, the theme of surveillance that goes on in Hamlet is kind of wild. I guess putting it in this Gothic aesthetic, and then also incorporating the modern music, bridges those gaps to bring it to a more modern audience.
Grace: To be fair, Shakespeare himself is like a timeless character; there are Shakespeare plays still being put on now. I think what Sienna and the rest of us are doing is trying to incorporate a modern element into what Shakespeare has already given us, which is pretty much a timeless classic itself.
Are there any limitations that come with being a student-led production?
Sienna: It’s hard to schedule when everyone’s going to be free at the same time, Sophie-Ella, our lovely co-producer, can attest to that. It’s like, ‘oh, this one person’s not free when we need them free,’ and then, ‘it’s fine, we can go over it at another point with them,’ and that sort of thing. But I think we’ve definitely managed it, especially with a big cast of 12 people. The NNT is a really amazing space because I don’t feel like there are limitations to what we can achieve on stage.
Arwyn: I’d say the major limitation is just that Hamlet’s such a long play, you have no choice but to cut out a fair bit.
Emma: Also, it’s always such a short turnaround for any production. I think we’re pretty far ahead. As we are right now, we’re further ahead than I have been before… I’ve been in the wastelands at this point in other shows.
Since working on the play, has anyone’s opinion of Hamlet shifted?
Jess: Yeah, I would say at the beginning, I definitely liked Hamlet less. When I first went over the play at the first table, I remember thinking, ‘God, he’s actually really annoying. But the more we played around with it, especially with Sienna’s direction, I’ve come to understand Hamlet as a character a lot more and in a lot more depth. All of his actions, at the end of the day, are driven by grief, and I think that’s something that everyone in the audience–and I know all of the cast–can relate to as part of the human experience. It’s definitely taught me to be more open-minded about characters when you first see them. I like him a bit more now.
Emma: I always see the issue with Hamlet is that it’s such an utterly iconic part that whenever someone is playing Hamlet, it’s, ‘oh, it’s Kenneth Branagh, and he’s 55, but he’s playing it like a fumbling (no offence) teenager who is really struggling.’ So, having first off a younger Hamlet and a Hamlet I know, I’m suddenly much more empathetic towards the whole song and dance of it. Like when you sit back, and you’re watching it and there’s a 50-year-old on stage, and you’re thinking, God, just make a decision.
Grace: As well, our Hamlet is a mostly female cast, and I feel like that adds a much bigger dimension to it than it originally did. You get to see almost like feminine rage come out within Hamlet, within Claudius, with all these characters… And you’re like, ‘Okay, get it, I understand you more now.’ You can relate to it more from a feminine aspect rather than just having Ophelia or Gertrude who actually, as we were talking about before, their parts have been diminished more as the play has got progressively more known.
What was the rehearsal process like? How’s it still going?
Jess: It’s such a great cast. From the beginning, all of us dove straight into it headfirst, which made rehearsals really easy. I don’t think anyone was really holding back. Sometimes, when you’re in rehearsals, a lot of the time, people can sort of keep something back in a rehearsal space and not really give 100%. But I think a lot of the time we have done that, apart from a few giggles.
Is there anything you think audiences often misunderstand about Shakespeare?
Arwyn: I don’t think people realise how funny he is. Even in rehearsals, we’ve had people realise suddenly that a line is actually a joke and they’re like, ‘Oh? That’s actually really good.’ Even in the tragedies, there are so many funny lines.
Grace: Also, I feel like people nowadays assume Shakespeare is almost like this higher-class affair when, actually, it’s never been like that. It’s for everyone, since the very beginning.
Do you have a favourite scene in the play?
Kayla: I think the ghost bit might be one of my favourites because when playing a villain, I find it’s very hard in the sense that you don’t want to do it completely villainous, where this is just not a real person
Jess: Almost farcical?
Kayla: Yeah, exactly. You want to have some part of it that’s like, ‘Okay, this actually makes sense as to why he is so villainous.’ You need to understand the motivations behind that. So I think any opportunity – although I know obviously the ghost isn’t the same person – where I can act in a way that is a bit more sympathetic or a bit where I have my soliloquy and it’s not ‘I am this evil person’, it’s more like, ‘I’m trying to talk to God, and I’m trying be forgiven’.
How does being a part of Hamlet or any Shakespeare production differ from other roles you’ve played in the past?
Emma: I’ve done Shakespeare prior to this, and here, when I’m learning the lines, I keep pulling out the wrong Shakespeare. So I keep doing my Hermia lines because I’m like, ‘something’s coming out, something’s coming out’, and it’s stored in the same bit of my head. It’s different where you’re learning it more word-to-word than semantically as you would a regular script that has modern language. But, in some ways, it’s easier to learn because I’ve got these set words I know how to do, but in other respects, if you lose your way, you’re lost.
Jess: No, I definitely agree. I think it just changed line learning a little bit.
Kayla: For me, it’s just playing a man that’s a villain, because I have played villains before, but there’s just something very unique about Claudius that I’ve never really done before. He’s very villainous in a way that, again, there’s obvious motivations for why he does those things, but he’s also very disrespectful to his wife, he doesn’t respect most people that are around him. There’s just something about him where it’s so hard to draw on sympathy and again, playing a man is very hard. So, I think it’s unique in that way. It’s also not relatable at all. There was a play I did last year, and it was like this awful woman, but it’s like, ‘oh, this is me on my worst day.’ There is nothing about Claudius that is relatable…well, except for the time I did actually kill my brother.
Do you think there’s any line worthy of being more iconic than ‘To be or not to be’?
Kayla: I don’t think it’s more worthy because ‘to be or not to be’ is so amazing, but I have this really great line where I’m manipulating Laertes into basically getting revenge for what Hamlet’s done to Polonius, his dad. And I say this line: ‘Laertes was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?’ Love that line!
Grace: It’s the way you deliver it as well!
Kayla: So cheeky, such a cheeky line! Love it!
Jess: Are we talking just Hamlet lines? Cause I’m such a sucker for Lady Macbeth. She genuinely is the best character. I know ‘Come you spirits’ is really- I mean, people do know that line, but I feel like just Lady Macbeth as a character needs to be explored more because there’s so much to her. And I think that whole soliloquy is just fantastic. The way that she starts off, as I would argue, quite unsure and then this power that she gets with nature… She just becomes more overwhelmed and more infatuated with the power that she holds. I think that’s so cool. I think like the relationship between women and nature and like even [you, Emma,] drowning in a lake, like it all comes back.
Since you’ve brought up Lady Macbeth, and we’ve talked about how this is a mostly all-women cast, what are your opinions on Shakespeare and his treatment of female characters?
Arwyn: I think he’s fairly progressive in a lot of ways.
Grace: Like contemporary for his time.
Arwyn: I don’t know if you‘ve read The Winter’s Tale, but Paulina is so empowered and strong-willed and at no point is that taken from her. In the entire second half , she’s lying to the king that his wife is dead just to teach him a lesson, and she’s not villainised for that. I think she’s a really good example.
The performance starts next week. Are you guys feeling excited? Are you ready?
Kayla: Yes! Let’s do it!
Sienna: It’s gonna be really fun! I’m so excited to see the technical run when we can actually see it with all the tech, all the lighting and all the music.
Tickets are available now for NNT’s Hamlet!
Calista Kiloh
Featured image courtesy of Max Muselmann via Unsplash. Image use license found here. No changes were made to this image.
In-article photos courtesy of @hamlet_nnt via Instagram. No changes were made to these photos.
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