Waiting for Hamlet by Sussex writer David Visick won the Kenneth Branagh New
Writing Award over two years ago but has had to wait until now to make a full
stage debut. With the help of the Brighton Fringe Michael Graney Bursary, this
dynamic Shakespearean comedy is coming to The Room Above this June.
Writing Award over two years ago but has had to wait until now to make a full
stage debut. With the help of the Brighton Fringe Michael Graney Bursary, this
dynamic Shakespearean comedy is coming to The Room Above this June.
Set before the tragedy of Hamlet begins, Waiting for Hamlet places the Old King in the
afterlife with his jester, Yorick. Locked down in limbo, the King wants to go back and
right wrongs, but there’s a problem, he wants to right the wrong wrongs. And the only
thing that can stop the old fool is the old Fool, Yorick.
A comedy about the greatest tragedy ever written, Waiting for Hamlet is produced by
Sussex based Smokescreen Productions and performed by 90s sit-com actor Tim Marriott
(The Brittas Empire; Allo, Allo) and Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Nicholas
Collett. As Tim (Old King) puts it, “two old fools, playing two old fools…”
Nicholas (Yorick) says, “it’s been a long journey making this piece, a shortened version
saw life at the Windsor Fringe before being developed into the full play that should have
premiered at Brighton and Edinburgh last year. In pandemic confusion, the Old King
keeps wondering where are we and where we are going… I just tell him that we are
where we are, and so on we go…” That’ll be the Rialto in June, then!
