Seoul Shakespeare Company takes on “Hamlet,” arguably the most revered of Shakespeare’s plays, starting this weekend in Daehangno.

Directed by Jessica Adel, the project is partly crowd-funded, giving the company security in being able to put on future productions and the chance to play in a bigger theater in Hyehwa.

“It was unbelievable,” said Lindsey Higgins, Seoul Shakespeare Company’s artistic director. “We were shooting for $3,000 this time and we were actually able to raise a little over $5,000.”

It is part of a general growth in profile that Higgins said they had benefited from.

“It feels like there’s been quite an instant response this time,” she said.

“Maybe people know our name a bit more, but it feels like it was a lot easier to reach out and connect with people.”

The stage will be open on two sides and provide Korean subtitles, while the setting is designed to evoke a cold environment using hanging fabrics and paintings.

“Working with the budgets that we have, you have to get creative in how you create different spaces on the stage without being able to actually build walls,” said Adel, who added that she had also made good use of “hanji,” or Korean traditional paper.

“When different light hits it, it takes on very different textures, so sometimes it ends up looking like stone and sometimes it’s very light and airy looking, like snow.”

Adel said the theme came to her when working on the script.

“Denmark is not a balmy climate to begin with, so we pushed it a little bit further,” she said.

“When I was reading the script I kept getting images of icebergs and big bodies of ice floating in water. The further along the story you go, you’re delving deeper and deeper below the surface, and you realize that what you see above the surface is a tiny percentage of what’s actually going on.”

Her take on the play in general focuses on the conflict of outside influence and internal instinct.

“What happens when you ignore the core of yourself to follow pressures from the outside world ... it almost inevitably has destructive consequences when you ignore the core of who you are,” she said.

“(Hamlet) is very much a thinker and his father is very much a fighter, so we’ve got action versus philosophy, and he is living in the shadow of his father and then literally having his father’s ghost demand this action of him.

“I think the minute he decides to go down this path he seals his fate, because he spends the whole play trying to talk himself into it because it does go against who he is.”

Hamlet runs at the Kim Dong Soo Playhouse on April 13, 20 and 27 at 7 p.m. and 14, 21 and 28 at 4 p.m.

The April 14 and 21 shows will be followed by a Q&A session with the cast and director.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)