"The sight is dismal." Nearly everyone is dead and the blood still warm when an adventuring Norwegian royal enters the grisly final scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Good night, Sweet Prince... hello Fortinbras, the wrong man at the right time in one of the funniest stage comedies you will ever see.

Lee Blessing's Fortinbras picks up where Hamlet leaves off, as hilarious as Hamlet is tragic. Whose story will be left for the ages? Fortinbras' own, if he has anything to say about it. It's easy to invent a little history... unless you're up against the conscience of Horatio, two Polish maidens, one lustful succuba, and that weird talking box in the cellar.

No previous knowledge of Hamlet is required. Fortinbras would want it that way.

THE STORY:

Young Fortinbras, the son of Hamlet's father's oldest rival, enters during the last scene of Hamlet only to order the bodies of the royal family shuffled off while he devises the best possible media blitz to legitimize his ascension to the throne of Denmark.

Horatio, sworn to the dead Hamlet to convey the truth of his actions, is immediately cast by Fortinbras into the role of an unwilling public relations person. Meanwhile, Fortinbras is forced to balance a disastrous and mistaken invasion of Poland with a seductive and harrowing array of ghosts, ranging from a vampish Ophelia to a repentant Claudius and Gertrude, all of whom cast doubts in his mind as to what really makes up the character of a ruler.

In the afterworld, all of the characters reconvene, wiser now by their deaths and ready to make a new go of it in Elsinore.