About the Play:

Fortinbras has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

Fortinbras is a full-length comedy by Lee Blessing. This political satire picks up where William Shakespeare's Hamlet leaves off. With contemporary dialog reminiscent of a Daily Show opening monologue, Fortinbras includes almost every character from Hamlet returning as a ghost. Questions are raised about authority and leadership with mocking (and loving) reverence for Shakespeare's vision and characters, but prior knowledge or familiarity with Shakespeare is absolutely not required to enjoy the play.

Fortinbras is a dark comedy that gives us the chance to laugh at just how ridiculous life, truth, authority and leadership really are – inescapably relevant to today's political scene. The oddly chipper Norwegian Prince Fortinbras, a modern man of action, enters during the last scene of Hamlet only to order the bodies of the royal family shuffled off while he devises the best possible media blitz to legitimize his ascension to the throne of Denmark. Horatio, sworn to the dead Hamlet to convey the truth of his actions, is immediately cast by Fortinbras into the role of an unwilling public relations person. Meanwhile, Fortinbras is forced to balance a disastrous and mistaken invasion of Poland with a seductive and harrowing array of ghosts, ranging from a vampish Ophelia to a repentant Claudius and Gertrude, all of whom cast doubts in his mind as to what really makes up the character of a ruler. Finally, Horatio, driven to madness by the refusal of everyone to believe in him, assassinates Fortinbras and then kills himself. In the afterworld, all of the characters reconvene, wiser now by their deaths and ready to make a new go of it in Elsinore.

Fortinbras premiered in 1991 at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California, opened off Broadway in 1992 at Signature Theater and was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the year's ten best plays. Since then it has been consistently delighting audiences, and has become a staple of community theatres, regional repertory houses, and high schools.

Cast: 4 female, 10 male

What people say:

"Lee Blessing's splendid musing on the most influential play in the English language ... This comedy serves up a yuppie, postmodern Fortinbras, a bewildered Horatio, a blossoming Osric and lots of tasty ghosts ." — Time Magazine

"Ghosts are hellzapoppin in Lee Blessing's self-described new metaphysical farce, Fortinbras, a comic interplay of wry literary criticism and contemporary wit which takes up where William Shakespeare's Hamlet left off. As inescapably relevant to today's political scene as the classic from which it is drawn, Fortinbras cannot help but raise questions about authority and leadership, yet with its mocking (and loving) reverence for Shakespeare's vision, Blessing's play comes closer in tone to Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead — sexy, inquisitive, and ultimately satisfying to the revisionist theater-lover." — Los Angeles Times

"…only Blessing would possess the nerve and the talent to undertake such a task…Where we suffered and wailed at the consequences of Shakespeare's tragedy, we can laugh along with Blessing at what follows in its wake…Shakespeare himself would have loved it." — Drama-Logue

About the Playwright:

Lee Blessing is an American playwright who remained in his hometown of Minneapolis working in regional theater before relocating to New York when he was in his forties. The author of over twenty plays and screenplays, he been nominated for Tony and Olivier Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He is professor emeritus at Rutgers University, where for a dozen years he headed the Graduate Playwriting Program of Mason Gross School of the Arts.