By 1812Blockhouse
A Mansfield company brings the Bard of Avon’s most famous tragedy into the open air this summer. A prince haunted by grief, a kingdom hiding its rot, and a young man trying to decide what truth demands of him will come to life this June in Mansfield’s South Park.
The Mansfield Shakespeare Company will present a free outdoor production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet on June 19 and 20 at 7:30 PM, with a final performance on June 21 at 3:30 PM. The production will take place in South Park on Brinkerhoff Avenue, continuing the company’s mission of making Shakespeare accessible, engaging, and available to the community. Admission is free. Donations will be accepted, but are not expected. Audience members are encouraged to bring chairs, picnic blankets, drinks, and snacks.
A Familiar Story In A Public Place
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most famous works, but Director Joseph Fahey is not treating that familiarity as a limitation. In fact, he sees it as one of the great challenges of staging the play.
“The expectations,” Fahey said, when asked about the biggest challenge in directing Hamlet. “Everyone knows or has at least heard of this play. Many people can recite more than a few lines from it.”
For Fahey, the goal is not to make Hamlet feel distant, academic, or preserved behind glass. It is to let the story breathe in front of a modern audience.
“We want to build on the audience’s existing connections to this great work,” he said, “but also offer them something that is immediate, and genuine and honest.”
That immediacy is part of what makes Shakespeare in the park work. The plays were never meant only for classrooms or formal stages. Outdoors, with people gathered in a shared public space, Hamlet becomes less a literary monument and more a live encounter with grief, doubt, danger, and the need to know what is real.
A Play About Being Lost
At its center, Hamlet is a story about a son reeling from his father’s death, his mother’s remarriage, and the suspicion that the world around him is built on deception. It is a tragedy of revenge, but also of uncertainty. Every major choice seems to carry a moral cost.
Fahey believes that is why the play remains so powerful.
“Hamlet, at its core, is about feeling lost in a world that has turned on you,” he said. “It is about the dark ugliness that can hide behind smiling faces.”
He also sees the play as deeply human, not merely dramatic. Its characters love badly, grieve differently, lash out, hide, collapse, and search for something solid beneath them.
“It is about loving and hating your parents, your children, your friends, and even yourself,” Fahey said. “It is about love, loss, grief, and finding moments of joy and truth in your darkest days.”
A Dream Role, And A Daunting One
Josh Carpenter, who will play Hamlet, described the part as both thrilling and intimidating.
“To me, Hamlet is the dream role, in a dream show,” Carpenter said. “It is hands down my favorite play, book, work of Shakespeare etc.”
The size of the role is part of the challenge. Hamlet is one of the most demanding parts in the English-language stage canon, both emotionally and verbally. Carpenter is candid about the pressure.
“Am I terrified of the lines? Yes,” he said. “Am I terrified of butchering the best part I’ve gotten in my acting career? Yes. Is that putting a fire under my you-know-where? Most definitely.”
One of the enduring questions in any Hamlet production is whether the prince’s madness is real, feigned, or something more unstable. Carpenter does not intend to give audiences an easy answer.
“Hamlet is as mad as you think he is,” he said. “And that’s what I want the audience to leave with.”
Ophelia’s Mirror
Leanna Uselton will play Ophelia, one of Shakespeare’s most haunting tragic figures. For Uselton, the role’s power lies partly in Ophelia’s compressed stage time and partly in the meaning carried through her final scenes.
“Shakespeare’s women have always fascinated me, especially his tragic heroines,” she said.
She is especially drawn to Ophelia’s connection to flowers, whose meanings would have been more immediately understood by Shakespeare’s original audiences. In Ophelia’s final appearance, Uselton sees a moment of terrible clarity.
“She escapes societal expectations and forces the court to listen to her,” Uselton said, “but she is the mirror that no one wants to look into.”
That makes the role demanding in a different way. Ophelia must unfold across relatively few scenes, yet her arc has to register fully by the time the tragedy reaches its breaking point.
“Someone playing Ophelia has to build on that moment with only five scenes,” Uselton said, “and I think that is going to be the biggest challenge for me.”
Shakespeare For The Community
The Mansfield Shakespeare Company was founded in 2023 with a goal of bringing high-quality cultural experiences to Mansfield and surrounding communities through performances and interactive events centered on Shakespeare’s work. This production of Hamlet is being staged in a concise, carefully edited version designed for contemporary audiences. That approach fits the company’s larger purpose: keeping the language, drama, and humanity of Shakespeare alive without making the experience feel remote.
Uselton said that is why Hamlet still has the capacity to reach people across centuries.
“While the world changes over time, human nature does not,” she said. “See a Shakespeare show, and you may just see yourself reflected back at you.”
The production is made possible in part by an investment of public funds from the Ohio Arts Council, which supports arts experiences intended to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically.
For one June weekend, that support will help turn South Park into Elsinore, with Mansfield audiences invited to sit under the open sky and watch one of literature’s great questions unfold: what should a person do when the truth finally demands an answer?
Event Details
What: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
When: June 19 at 7:30 PM; June 20 at 7:30 PM; June 21 at 3:30 PM
Where: Mansfield’s South Park, Brinkerhoff Avenue
Cost: Free; donations accepted but not expected
What to bring: Chairs, picnic blankets, drinks, and snacks
