REV Theatre Company’s graveside ‘Hamlet’

Last year, REV Theatre Company performed its Midsummer Night’s Dream to sizable picnic-toting crowds in South Philly’s Columbus Square park. During one show, a few local kids downed bikes and hung on the playground fence, so entranced by the occasion that REV artistic codirector Rudy Caporaso, in the role of Puck, incorporated them into the action on the fly.

This year, REV continues to promise the unexpected, staging Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Laurel Hill Cemetery for two weekends in July. For the last few years, REV has drawn large crowds to its signature sexy-macabre Fringe Festival cabaret among the nighttime graves, and it calls Hamlet a “consummate ghost story.”

Laurel Hill’s trees, gravestones, tombs, obelisks, and mausoleums are the set of this site-specific production, which will turn the cemetery into “a surreal and hallucinatory place” while keeping this “immersive” Hamlet’s classic elements. REV artistic codirector Rosey Hay (a former mentor of your WNWN editor) directs; last year’s spangled, disco-suited Puck will become Hamlet.

The show runs two and a half hours with intermission, and reservations are strongly suggested. BYO chairs, blankets, and beverages (and maybe a little bug spray), plus a picnic to eat before the show if you want — the permanent tenants crowded below and around you will keep quiet. Probably.

REV Theatre Company’s Hamlet is coming to Laurel Hill Cemetery (3822 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia) on Friday, July 7, and Saturday, July 8, and on Friday, July 14, and Saturday, July 15. (Rain dates are Sunday, July 9, and Sunday, July 16.) All performances begin at 8pm. Advance tickets are available online.