Pocket Play Review: A Klingon Hamlet with the Ronin Theatre Company

Author Julie Hammonds is on a quest to complete Shakespeare’s canon in calendar year 2025… and this play definitely counts. In these pocket play reviews, she records brief impressions of each show she sees.

• The Play: A Klingon Hamlet
• The Company: Ronin Theatre Company (Phoenix)
• The Stage: I saw it at the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival’s Beaver Street Theatre; it’s also playing in Glendale
• Run Dates: May 30 to June 1, 2025 (Flagstaff) and June 20~29 (Stage Left Theatre in Glendale, AZ)
• Memorable for: The smart and funny revisions that married Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Klingon warrior culture, sparking new energy in a familiar tale.
• The Most Troubling Use of a Tribble Award goes to the authors who came up with a creative new source for the poison that kills King Hamlet.

Pocket Play Review:

I wasn’t sure what to expect at A Klingon Hamlet. Would I hear any of Shakespeare’s lines? Or would all-new text tell the familiar story? Would I be able to understand the dialogue, or would it be spoken in Klingon, a language (created by fans of Star Trek) I don’t speak?

Fortunately, that last mystery was cleared up by the production’s parenthetical subtitle: (in English).

I had reason to think I would enjoy the show. I’ve been a Star Trek fan ever since a rerun of the episode “Amok Time” caught my attention when I was about 8 years old. I’m also a fan of Ronin Theatre Company, which is known for bringing emotional energy to every performance. Given those auspicious factors, I figured that if A Klingon Hamlet shared any DNA at all with Shakespeare’s version, I’d be satisfied.

The reality far exceeded my expectations. A Klingon Hamlet is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, pared down to essentials and then “adapted” with the addition of references to Star Trek and to Klingon culture. Klingons are warriors, and the added text infuses Hamlet with the energy of a culture in which everyone carries a weapon and knows how to use it.

Setting a revenge tragedy like Hamlet in this warrior culture fired up the actors, who leaned forcefully into their lines. Keath Hall’s Hamlet was not an indecisive philosopher, forever hovering on the edge of a decision. He was battle-ready from the beginning.

This sharp-edged interpretation showed us something new, especially in the women of Elsinore, Queen Gertrude (the vibrant Amy Searcy) and young Ophelia (the fierce Kate Haas). They can be portrayed as bystanders or victims, but not in this production. These women are agents who shape their own destiny, sometimes with blades.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression, though. A Klingon Hamlet isn’t a dark and bloody take on Shakespeare. The Star Trek references give it humor, and the more you remember from the TV show and movies, the funnier it is. Keath Hall’s “antic disposition” lent just the right spice of silliness to the show. A packed house at Beaver Street Theatre leaned into every line. I was glad to be among them.

In sum: In a thrilling fusion of Shakespeare’s classic revenge tragedy and the interstellar camp of Star Trek, Ronin Theatre Company’s A Klingon Hamlet boldly goes where no Bard has gone before.

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Why would anyone translate Hamlet into Klingon and then back into English, you ask? According to Wikipedia, it all began with a line from the motion picture Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in which a character named Chancellor Gorkon states, “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”