Name the top three most iconic characters in Hamlet. Who comes to mind: The sweet prince himself? The betrayed Ophelia? Poor Yorick’s skull? Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, now that Tom Stoppard’s their publicist?
Chances are, you didn’t think about Horatio.
Enter playwright Genevieve Adam. Her latest work, Heratio, gives the prince’s best friend the spotlight, and is set in Elsinore castle shortly after the bloodbath that ends Hamlet. Produced by Guild Festival Theatre (GFT) and directed by the festival’s co-artistic leader Helen Juvonen, the production begins performances August 7, between the columns of Guild Park’s Greek amphitheatre.
“Horatio’s the only one who comes out of Hamlet alive,” said Adam in a Zoom interview. “In a lot of versions of [the play], Horatio is sort of beige and milquetoast. I’ve always thought that was a missed opportunity.”
That beigeness might stem from the fact that, in Hamlet, Horatio “is a man of science, [who doesn’t] do feelings,” said Adam. By contrast, “Horatio in our version is definitely all in the feels, [asking]: ‘What do I do now? Should I go home? Should I act as a witness? What do I know to be true?’”
Toronto audiences may be familiar with Adam’s deftly plotted trilogy of historical thrillers set in New France. (The series’ final installment, Heartless, was produced by Favour the Brave Collective in 2024.) Heratio, too, has all the elements of a thriller, though it’s also a knowing comedy with plenty of easter eggs for Hamlet fans. With Denmark’s royal family either poisoned, stabbed, or both, Horatio must navigate a new ruler, ongoing cycles of revenge, and the watchful eyes of observant kitchen scullions — all while keeping several secrets that could crack Elsinore wide open.
One of those secrets might be obvious from the play’s title: Adam’s Horatio is a woman in disguise.
“I think people will immediately cotton on,” said Adam. She noted that Heratio’s characters don’t conform to the rigid gender roles some audiences might expect in a medieval period piece. “The women and genderfluid roles really take the agency.”
Not that this Horatio is all action. She’s “paralyzed by grief, like Hamlet was at the start of Hamlet,” said Adam. “This lady needs to figure things out.”
Tyler J. Seguin, part of GFT’s leadership team and the original director of Heartless, invited Adam to develop Heratio through the theatre’s Classics Reimagined development program, starting in October 2023.
“I tossed around a couple [of] ideas,” said Adam. “And then my stepdad died quite unexpectedly. I was plunged into grieving, and that led to me to focus on Hamlet, because it’s a play about grief and having to adapt to a new reality.”
Adam initially had six months to develop Heratio. “I was [determined to] meet my deadlines — fool that I was!” she joked. “It meant that I had to show up and be like, ‘All right characters, what are we doing today? What are we arguing about today?’
“That’s mostly how I move things forward [in my plays],” she continued. “‘Who hasn’t been in a room together yet?’ If you put two people in a room who desperately want opposite things, the story will advance. They’ll be fighting, or they’ll try to seduce each other. I try not to let them leave until something has shifted in either one of them.”
Adam described how her process often starts with a clear first image. When she began Heratio, “I had this image, almost Monty Python-esque, of people trying to scrub all that blood from the last scene of Hamlet out of the stones.”
From there, she said, “it really does develop organically,” without an outline or a wall covered in post-its — “which to some people sounds like madness! And maybe it is. But it means that if there’s a surprise in the script, it tends to be very surprising, because I haven’t anticipated it.”
One surprise is how many wisecracks Heratio’s characters get away with as they scrub bloodstains, plot against each other, and grieve. Plays don’t need to be “traumatic to teach us a lesson about grief,” Adam reflected. “We can be taught through laughter — and certainly, lots of terribly funny things happen at funerals.”
Adam was also conscious of writing for a summer venue: “The audience is coming to this beautiful proscenium with their children and a picnic. They don’t necessarily want to be brought right down. Hopefully people will feel [grief] in the depth of the piece, but [still be able to] have some laughs, and leave the evening in a lighthearted way.
“That’s the gift of the play,” she continued. Though grief-stricken by Hamlet’s death, Horatio learns that “you can smile again, and it doesn’t dishonour that person’s memory. You can juggle a sandwich and still love that person, [or] go on to find new love and still love that person.”
Heratio runs August 7 to 24 at Guild Park and Gardens’ Greek Theatre. Tickets are available here.
Guild Festival Theatre is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
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