Shakespeare Unplugged: Raoul Bhaneja Performs Solo Hamlet in Calgary

It’s Hamlet — with a twist.
No set. No props. No cast.

Just one actor. One voice. Seventeen characters. And a two-hour sprint through one of the most famous plays ever written.

Award-winning Canadian actor Raoul Bhaneja is bringing Hamlet (solo) back to Calgary for a limited run, May 7–10 — a show he’s performed more than 150 times in 25 cities since its debut in 2006.

“We don’t use sets. We don’t use props. We don’t use fancy lighting cues or sound cues,” Bhaneja explains. “It’s almost like Shakespeare unplugged… one person, the words, and the audience.”

Directed by OBIE Award winner Robert Ross Parker, the show is produced by The Shakespeare Company and staged at Vertigo’s Studio Theatre.

Bhaneja — known for roles in Blindspot, The Expanse, Suits, and Narc — says this is a different kind of performance, one where everything hinges on being fully present.

“I wish I could say I never make a single mistake… but it’s Hamlet,” he laughs. “It’s not like other shows where if you’re having an off night, someone else can carry the scene. In Hamlet (solo), it’s all you.”

That means when the unexpected happens, you’re on your own.

Bhaneja recalls one show where a latecomer tried to enter mid-performance, but the door was locked. With no crew member available to help — and no scene partner to take over — he had to break character… sort of.

“I had to stop the show, walk over, open the door and say, ‘Hey, can you just give me a few minutes? We’re almost at the end of act one…’”

Then he walked back on stage, picked up exactly where he left off, and carried on with the next line of Hamlet.

But there’s a magic to the simplicity. It’s not just a show — it’s a shared act of imagination, like reading a novel. Bhaneja performs in jeans, a T-shirt, and runners. No costumes. No distractions.

“All the details, with your imagination in this version… you, the audience, you do a little bit of work because it’s not all being handed to you on a platter,” Bhaneja says. “But Shakespeare is so brilliant.”

His reverence for the text deepened in 2002, when he trained at Shakespeare’s Globe in London under Mark Rylance. That’s where it all clicked — these plays were designed to reach everyone.

“I realized Shakespeare’s plays were always done for an audience of a huge range. He would do the plays for people who had never been to school and weren’t educated, and at the same performance, the King or Queen might be present. So Shakespeare’s plays were made with lots of information and cues in a very simple way for the audience to follow.”

That structure — where characters are often named before they speak and the storylines are rich but accessible — makes even this stripped-down version surprisingly easy to follow; and Bhaneja and Parker leaned into that clarity by thinking cinematically.\

“When we were making the show, we thought of it more like being a film, like it cuts from character to character,” Bhaneja says. “I don’t walk over here and say one line and then walk over there and say the other line. I just switch between characters like a camera cuts.”

The result is unexpectedly intimate.

“You’re very close,” he says. “I mean, the Vertigo Studio Theatre seats 120 people. You’ll never see a production of Hamlet, really, in a full production, in this 120-seat theater.”

So, whether you’re a seasoned Shakespeare buff or just want to see a masterclass in solo performance, Hamlet (solo) offers something rare — and fleeting.

“I’m just so happy that I get to come back and do it in Calgary one more time,” Bhaneja says. “I was here in 2012. I’m here in 2025. I don’t know if I’ll be back with the show.”

Hamlet (solo) runs May 7 through May 10 at the Vertigo Studio Theatre.

The performance is approximately two hours long.

Tickets are available through Vertigo Theatre.