Tulsa Shakespeare Company: Hamlet
Lynn Riggs Theater
Through November 8, 2026
Unlike the Prince of Denmark, Tulsa Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet never hesitates. It pounces, it shouts, it capers and spooks—in short, it’s the most fun you can have at a 400-year-old tragedy.
It’s also a great way to exorcise whatever haunts you’ve got still hanging around after Halloween. The perfection of Hamlet as a bit of spooky season programming is right there in the text: “‘Tis now the very witching time of night,” Hamlet says, right after staging a play that calls out his parents for absolutely wrecking the natural order of things. This production leans into that spirit with sound and lighting effects by Ben Morgan and Anna Puhl that bring this kingdom right into hex house territory.
In the Lynn Riggs Theater black box, director Brock England scales the story down to feel very up-close and very personal, focused on the relationships that ultimately make all of Denmark rattle. This is a hot-blooded Hamlet, not a cool, reserved one. The era-spanning mixed-and-matched costumes by Paulette Record and the spare set—a couple of benches and two throne-like chairs—radically foreground the people of Elsinore who go bump against each other in the night.
Though the play bears one man’s name, this is very much an ensemble production. Alternately jostled and supported by everyone in his world, this Hamlet, played with spirited clarity by Armando Rivera, is like a lantern flame flickering in the dark. The question of what’s real and what’s not is a big one throughout the play, which seethes with paranoia and subterfuge from its first scene. But the heart of TSC’s production is family, not politics: family found and lost, bonds restored and betrayed, the friction of love and loss that pulls at the seams of living.