| Sumario: | This article addresses the question, to what extent do New Zealand productions of Shakespeare attempt to reframe the setting or localise the text? Is it problematic to do so? Productions which introduce a Maori element are briefly discussed, including an Othello set during the Maori Land Wars of the nineteenth century. The principal focus is on productions of Hamlet, a play which has retained its popularity on the New Zealand stage, but which seems to resist a post-colonial, 'indigenised' reading. Productions staged between 1995 and 2006, directed by David O'Donnell, Michael Hurst and David Lawrence, and which demonstrate various approaches to the text, are discussed. Set beside them are two works that variously re-appropriate Shakespeare's text: Jean Betts's postmodern feminist pastiche Ophelia Thinks Harder (1993); and Toa Fraser's urban, diasporic Bare (1998). They represent the traditionally 'marginalised' voices - Betts as female, Fraser as Pacific Island immigrant - who address in different ways the notion that Hamlet resists post-colonial re-appropriation.
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