Hamnet
Maggie O’Farrell, Adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti
American Conservatory Theatre,
A Production of The Royal Shakespeare Company & Real Street Productions
A romance born in the woods between teenagers William Shakespeare and Agnes Hathaway eventually bears a son whose sudden death spawns near unbearable grief as well as inspiration for one of the world’s greatest plays. With words that flow poetic and scenes that are magical, mystical, and at time mysterious, Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet — now at American Conservatory Theatre — is mesmerizing and hypnotic in its power over audience attention.
We are immediately drawn into the fictionalized imagining of the couple’s immediate attraction that hints of future Bard staged romances. The touring production by The Royal Shakespeare Company and Real Street Productions instills ACT’s Toni Rembe Theatre with a aura of Elizabethan England but also of an other worldly atmosphere where spirits and nature combine to whisper their secrets of things both happy and sad. Themes of love and loss, hurt and revenge, families in turmoil and in reconciliation, and of the healing powers of nature permeate O’Farrell’s imagining of William and Agnes’ lives together — themes that will find their ways into future works by the budding playwright.
But Hamnet is much less about Shakespeare than it is about a wife whom in reality, the world today knows very little. Agnes — whom history records as Anne — is the person on stage we are most drawn to watch her every expression and listen intently to both what she says and what she does not say. Kemi-Bo Jacobs is a powerhouse in the role of Agnes, a woman of color who provides O’Farrell’s story with a further theme of what it means to be “the other.”
Her Agnes speaks in an accent more pronounced and exacting than anyone else. She is in touch with nature in ways others rumor as witchery. She hears voices of the future and whispers of those from the past. When she falls in love, she is the one more in control of the pace and the passion even as the young William is like an eager and excited puppy in heat. When in labor or in grief, her breathy moans that turn to primal screams, her twisting and writhing body, and her winced and contorted facial expressions hit us to the core. And when she is angered by a step-mother who treats her with shouted scorn and spit-filled spite (Nicki Hobday as Joan), the storm that erupts near shakes the wooden rafters of the stage surrounding her. In all respects, Kemi-Bo Jacobs is a prime reason not to miss what may be one of the best performances to grace the ACT stage in a long time.
As young William who shortens his name to Will once in London, Rory Alexander is wonderfully boyish, generally gentle, quite playful, and often quietly pensive as he walks about carrying a stack of books. However, when confronted time and again by a red-faced, prone-to-violence father (Nigel Barrett as John) who yells nose-to-nose his displeasure of his son’s unwillingness to help out in his glove-making workshop — all the time choking the boy with a locked handhold — William finally rises in new-found fury to let his father know who is now in charge. Scenes of a future prince confronting his step-father come quickly to mind.
After his hand-fasted marriage with a pregnant Agnes when the two literally “tie the knot” to commit themselves as a couple, the first of three children, Susanna (Ava Hinds-Jones) is born in a sequence where the future, grown child trailing a white stream of cloth behind her brings a swaddled bundled to her mother-in-labor to deliver herself to Agnes. It is just one of many fascinating, ethereal decisions by Director Erica Whyman that ensures this staged Hamnet is often like watching a dream taking place in front of us.
When she is pregnant and delivering a second time, Agnes is horrified to hear her second child, a son, comes into the world accompanied by a twin sister. Agnes has always felt the presence of only two, future children, and her penetrating cries of “no” to the puzzled women around her are the fears of what someday might happen and in fact does happen — a beloved and loving son, Hamnet (Ajani Cabey), who will die at the age of eleven of the plague.
But before that tragedy strikes and with now a happy household of a loving wife and three rambunctious children, William convinces his father that he can find a bigger market for leather gloves in London than in their hometown of Stratford — an idea from Agnes who believes him when he says, “I cannot breathe here.” Finding big needs for gloves among the theatre community, Will soon is on stage himself and even writing scripts for a group of actors who have a heyday rehearsing a play he first calls Romeo. In only a few years during which he might make it back to Stratford a couple times a year, Will’s plays multiply in number and fame, with even the Virgin Queen herself taking notice.
The contrast is stark that we see between scenes in London of Will and fellow actors rehearsing sword fights or trying to remember the metered lines just penned the night prior and those scenes back in Stratford where a wife is left alone to raise a family and to face sickness and death without her husband. The horseplay and joking on stage and the planning and building of a new home called “The Globe” is in harsh comparison to the fevered, frenzied spasms and tosses of a dying son; the chilling cries of a mother as she collapses in grief, and the prolonged silence of a family gathered as a boy’s body is wrapped for burial. A father’s attention in garnering larger and larger audiences of adoring fans rather than being in attendance to the needs of his wife and children plays out in scenes that are stunning, startling, and heart-breaking.
But from such sadness comes a seed that grows into a play whose premiere at the Globe is tearfully heart-warming. While what we are seeing is only fiction, what we know about the play Hamlet makes everything we see feel quite true. What and who Agnes sees as she watches Hamlet’s soliloquies — a second role for the earlier Hamnet, Ajani Cabey — is what we also want to see as a reality.
Among the London-based, stellar cast are others who also leave memorable impressions. Troy Alexander is Bartholomew, a giant of a younger brother to Agnes whose heart is as large as his striking stature; and whose counsel/understanding is wise/genuine. Penny Layden is a solid, comforting presence as William’s mother, Mary, who undergoes a major transformation from her initial, negative reactions to Agnes to becoming a loving mother figure whom Agnes has lacked with step-mother Joan. William’s younger sister, Eliza, is a delightful, free-spirited, and always smiling Heather Forster.
Bert Seymour displays along with Rory Alexander eye-popping sword-fighting skills (thanks to Fight Director Ayse Tashkiran) as his Burbage and Will rehearse a scene from Romeo. They are joined by a red-nosed, jolly, big-mouthed, and big-bellied Will Kempe who will surely someday play the Bard’s favorite creation, Falstaff — the role of Kempe being a chance for Nigel Barrett to show great contrast to his time as Will’s oft-monstrous father, John.
Deserving praise also as the production’s super stars are the members of the touring group’s Creative Team. Tom Piper’s set is a massive, multi-storied, multi-alcoved wooden construction whose overall shape hints greatly at The Globe Theatre which by play’s end, it will become. Piper also has created the visually awesome array of period costumes that define personalities, professions, and peculiarities. The lighting designed by Prema Mehta beautifully enhances set shifts as Agnes’ twenty-room Stratford house is constructed before our eyes or as suddenly The Globe becomes a reality. Finally, music composed by Oğuz Kaplangi serves as an ongoing, underlying score that accentuates both the joy and grief, the harsh and the gentle as well as the mysterious and the reality of continuously unfolding scenes.
Whether fans of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel or of the recent movie she co-wrote, Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation is sure to both please and to offer new insights and interpretations, especially given Erica Whyman’s inspired direction of this spectacular cast as ACT hosts this tour of The Royal Shakespeare Company & Real Street Productions’ Hamnet.
Rating: 5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Hamnet continues through May 24, 2026, in a two-hour, thirty-minute (including intermission) production at American Conservatory Theatre, the Toni Rembe Theatre, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at https://www.act-sf.org, by phone at 415-749-2228, and by email at tickets@act-sf.org.
Photo Credits: Kyle Flubacker
