—Carol M. Rice
Hamlet: considered by many to be one of the greatest plays of all time, despite the dark plot.
Film noir: literally translated from the French as “black film,” featuring cynical narration and bleak storytelling (which, to be honest, sounds a lot like Hamlet, yes?)
Combine the two by making Hamlet (the character) a hard-boiled private eye who talks more to the audience than the others onstage, and you have playwright John Minigan’s extremely clever Noir Hamlet, currently playing at the Addison Performing Arts Center courtesy of Pegasus Theatre.
Hamlet, better known as Little H, is reminiscing about his recently deceased father at the Elsinore Detective Agency, where he has taken over as private eye. He’s complaining aloud to the walls (aka the audience) that he hasn’t yet had a case yet—when spooky saxophone music leads him to the Ghost of his father, Big H, who suggests he was murdered and asks his son to solve the mystery of his death. Untimely is right: Little H immediately suspects his Uncle Claude, who speedily took up with his widowed mother Gertrude, and announced their engagement just two months after Big H’s death. While things aren’t exactly like Shakespeare’s original, Noir Hamlet manages to stick to the basic plot of Hamlet (with a greatly reduced cast. And though we end up with the requisite deaths, there are good laughs and intriguing plot twists along the way.
Nico Goretti is appropriately brooding and sullen as Little H, and his many monologues are entertaining and fresh. In the wrong hands, his gloom-and-doom attitude could become monotonous quick, but Goretti gives Little H just the right amount of charisma and complexity to keep that from happening. He also has a good chemistry with his fellow actors, as well as nice comic timing.
As Uncle Claude, Raymond Banda comes across as sneaky and sleezy. As we shouldn’t—never, ever—we can’t be given a chance to trust this guy, which means Banda is playing the role perfectly. He made me think of the old term, “snake oil salesman.”
At the performance I attended, understudy Jessica Lomas took on the role of Gertrude (Sheila D. Rose usually plays the part). Unlike her character in the OG Hamlet, this Gertrude grows a spine and does some digging on her own instead of letting the men try to take care of her. Lomas finds all the levels, from flirty to jealous to furious, and everything in between. She still dies,…but does it beautifully.
Ernesto Alanis plays the coroner Reynaldo and the late court jester Yorick (played by a small skull/skeleton puppet while hilariously channeling Señor Wences; look him up if you’re too young to know who I’m talking about. Alanis has amazing physical and vocal control and his all-too-short scene (‘Saw-right!!!”) was my favorite of the show. Brilliant work!
As Rae Chio, Big H’s former secretary whose big dream is be a nightclub singer, Maria Fernanda finds a way to make this bizarre character (who somehow gets around to encompassing most of the other roles in Hamlet) very real. Fernanda isn’t as big and flashy as her co-stars, but Rae is a more grounded character.
Speaking of big and flashy, Omar Valdez Rocha brings depth to the Ghost and creates a completely different persona for Paolo, essentially the rest of the necessary, mostly “bad guy” Hamlet roles not covered by Rae Chio. Rocha has excellent stage presence and larger-than-life facial expressions, and he knows how to properly milk a death scene.
Director Byron Holder has put together an exceptional cast and more importantly, he understands the film noir genre, as do his actors and designers. Luis Salazar has designed a dingy, multi-level playing space (including a typical run-down detective’s office) that instantly sets the tone. This is aided by Ken Davis’s lighting design, which somehow even includes a slowly spinning fan in certain key scenes. Geoffrey Dail’s melancholy sound design only adds to the noir feel, and while Abel Castillas’s props were generally spot on, I did have a problem with actors “playing” an alto saxophone onstage while tenor sax music was actually playing. Costume designer Megan Liles makes everyone look fabulous while sticking with the dark theme. Gertrude’s costumes were especially striking, and I loved the Ghost’s white suit.
All I knew about Noir Hamlet before seeing the show was that it was a film noir-style version of Hamlet. (Duh.) Consequently, I expected the language to be more Shakespearean and less like Sam Spade, and even warned my non-Shakespeare-loving friend who came along that it was still Shakespeare. Boy, was I wrong! While there are definitely some direct references to the Bard’s “words, words, words” (you’ll understand this when you see it) playwright Minigan has cut through all the poetry and couplets and hard-to-understand stuff to pull out just the story—and it works! I say this because the name “Hamlet” in the title may be scaring people off.
Trust me: this isn’t Shakespeare, and you really do need to see it. Noir Hamlet runs all the way through Halloween weekend.
WHEN: October 8-November 1, 2026
WHERE: Addison Theatre Centre (studio), 15650 Addison Road, Addison TX
WEB: pegasustheatre.org
