Donald Freed's stage version of HAMLET (IN REHEARSAL) unearths a buried play within the play within the play in which a guilt-imprisoned, state-imprisoned, cosmically-imprisoned Hamlet lunges for and ultimately grasps the quietus of freedom. It is an explosively original, marvelously creative feat of Nabokovian intellectual acrobatics. Wonderful!
Leon Katz, Leon Katz' Edition of the Notebooks of Gertrude Stein, Emeritus Professor, Yale University
If Shakespeare had reawakened in the oppressed theater of the 21st century, read Beckett, watched C N N and had a stiff drink, this is the play he would have written.
Adam Leipzig, producer & dramaturg
Donald Freed has brought us a completely new concept of Hamlet and a brilliant one. Setting up a rehearsal play to take its place with Buckingham and Michael Frayn, he engineers a high level debate/conflict, funny and active enough to hold any audience tight. The central impression is of a director beset like Hamlet, and a Hamlet with a great deal of the director. They share a predicament, fight it out and the audience wins.
Edward Pearce, Machiavelli's Children, The Great Man, The Guardian
No actor with a pulse could read this play without wanting to get up and do it. Freed takes us into dark corridors between the lines of Shakespeare's play, creating a brilliant met-drama full of theatrical joy, startling epiphany and crackling-good language. Unique as can be.
Ron Marasco, PhD, author of Notes to an Actor
Donald Freed's HAMLET (IN REHEARSAL) is a revelation that rings so true, you will wonder why you never thought of it. Freed has trumped his own genius. Amazing!
Lorinne Vozoff, Artistic Director, Theatre Group Studio
