Now open: Ophelia, Hackney’s newest theatre

Ophelia, a bar in Dalston, opened Hackney’s newest theatre in its basement on 3 December with A Dickensian Christmas, a festive play based on Charles Dickens’ short stories and other Christmas stock.

The play, directed by Ben Kernow, uses the Christmas preparations of Dickens’ domestic staff as a setting to retell some of his famous and not so famous stories as characters compete to tell the best, like The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn – about two children running away to get married.

Ophelia’s theatre space is an intimate affair with a seating area only a few times larger than the small stage. The lighting adds versatility, accentuating standout moments of the play like the moving death of Hans Christian Andersen’s destitute Little Match Girl in the Christmas snow.

However, the venue’s infancy occasionally glistens at the corner of your eye when modern paraphernalia reveal themselves just enough to grab your attention; the huge air conditioner on the ceiling or breeze blocks visible off scene as characters enter, for example.

Amusingly, an unforeseeable effect of current hipster nostalgia for the past and its aesthetics make it difficult to tell if you are looking at a Victorian kitchen or a trendy Hackney apartment.

“The chair is actually from this bar,” says Kernow. “I mean, it’s a lovely Victorian chair.”

Absence by Tim Cook is running at Ophelia from 10–22 December.