Heroine addict

RED ALERT Ambrose keeps her wits about her when playing Shakespeare.

Photograph: Sam Handel

Many a good actor has gone bad in verse. So it was with some trepidation that audiences filed into Central Park’s open-air Delacorte Theater last summer to see Lauren Ambrose make her Shakespearean debut in Romeo and Juliet. Sure, the radiant redhead, 30, was terrific as the restive Claire Fisher on HBO’s Six Feet Under; and yes, she had proved an adept stage actor in the 2006 Broadway revival of Awake and Sing!—but could she handle the demands of Juliet? Could she ever. Ambrose’s passionate, woundingly human performance won rave reviews and a Callaway Award for acting in classical theater. So when Lily Rabe—who had been scheduled to play Ophelia opposite Michael Stuhlbarg—withdrew from this summer’s production of Hamlet, director Oskar Eustis knew just where to turn.

Last summer you played Juliet; now it’s Ophelia. Are you worried about getting typecast as a suicidal Shakespearean heroine?
I don’t know! [Laughs] Geez, should I be? I like doing this kind of work. I like the Shakespeare. And this is a very difficult part, so it’s a challenge.

People have strong expectations of who Ophelia should be.
I’m lucky: I’m new to the play. I read it in high school, but I’ve never worked on the scenes and I’ve never seen a production of it—I just missed it. I missed Hamlet. So I didn’t come in with a lot of that stuff. But this character has become part of our cultural mythology. It’s humbling and breathtaking to see how much has been written about Ophelia. It’s a small part, you know, but there’s so much weight on her. And I find it very moving that 400 years ago Shakespeare, in his big play, wrote this little thread—this little story about what happens if we don’t give young women their voice.

She gets emotionally battered by the men in her life, and her arc is so extreme, with that mad scene…
I’ve banned that word—madness. When you’re crazy, you don’t think you’re crazy. And yes, she’s a punching bag. Ophelia says, “I shall obey, my lord,” and everything hinges on that for her. But it’s interesting to come to this from Juliet. It can’t just be that it’s a prefeminist world and Ophelia’s trapped in this patriarchal system—because so is Juliet, and Juliet doesn’t obey. There isn’t that easy answer.

But is Ophelia’s father, Polonius, wrong to warn her against Hamlet? I mean, he’s not that great a catch.
He’s a disaster! He’s a mess.

Plus, let’s face it, a mass murderer.
Well, only by the end. He’s driven to that. And a lot of it is about honor and position and politicking: When Polonius and [Ophelia’s brother] Laertes don’t want her to be involved with Hamlet, it’s for their own gain. Her life gets processed through this world of politics.

You studied voice as a kid. Will you be singing in Hamlet?
Oh, sure. There are definitely songs. Ophelia’s got a whole cabaret act in her last scene. [Laughs]

I always feel like there’s a lot of similarity between doing musical theater and verse theater.
Right, because the verse is a structure, like a song. And using the structure that’s provided frees something, something big. You’re required to use all of yourself in this work, at least in my experience. And it can hold you: It can hold all of the actor’s big, crazy emotions. In film you don’t really have to use the language: You have your big face on a screen, and the story is told visually. In this, it’s the power of the words. It’s difficult, but Shakespeare gives you so much. If you just trust the words and dare to fall and let him catch you, it seems to work.

Is there a learning curve to working at the Delacorte?
It’s a fantastic venue, even though it has its challenges and its treacheries. It’s a huge theater, and last year, I had a hard time just letting my body be in that space so unadorned, with nothing to hide behind. But I found that when you’re outside, you can really use the language and be as big as you need to be, and it travels. It frees the language into a whole other realm. It’s like, Wow, I can put all of myself into this material, and it will hold it. It will hold me. And you don’t have to worry about it. But I don’t know. [Laughs] I’m sure I’ll have to worry about it. [Pause] I’m worried.

Hamlet begins previews at the Delacorte Theater on Tue, May 27.