She’s never been kissed and all crushed out on a pouty prince. Her overbearing father forces her to sorta betray said prince in the hallway while Dad and the creepy king listen in. The prince treats her like dirt, says he never loved her, and acts all crazy about women, marriage and cosmetics. She is devastated. Her dad offers no consolation. And pretty soon, even though aforementioned dad is clearly a jerk, he gets killed while eavesdropping (yet again) behind an arras. Who killed him? Prince McDreamy. That sends her round the bend. Soon she’s singing really bad Elizabeth folk tunes, distributing herbs and making ill-advised tree-climbing expeditions over wintry brooks. And there in the watery depths (apparently, it was a deep brook) she dies. But even then our heroine gets no peace: Her soon-to-be-interred corpse is rudely manhandled by Prince Charmless in a too-little-too-late bid for forgiveness. From now on, when I head out to a Hamlet, I won’t wonder how Hamlet will be (or not be) but if anybody solved the Ophelia Problem.

What is that, you ask? The problem that causes any actress who plays Ophelia to suck beyond endurance. I’ve seen mediocre melancholy Danes and fine ones, but I’ve never seen an actress pull off Ophelia without looking alternately sappy and silly, especially in those final mad scenes.

In the current Jude Law Hamlet on Broadway (reviewed here), Gugu Mbatha-Raw found no way to make this character remotely believable or compelling; in fact, she’s probably the most boring Ophelia I’ve ever seen. Director Michael Grandage seems mainly intent on minimizing focus on her.

So, in the interest of one day actually giving a damn about this character, I offer producers, directors and starlets, free of charge, my solution to the Problem. No need to pay me, just credit me clearly in the program.

The first mistake is treating Ophelia like some virginal kewpie doll. Yes, she’s probably a virgin (although I’m sure some director has intimated a steamy affair between Hamlet and Ophelia), but that doesn’t mean she’s happy about it. She might be painfully shy, but determined that Hamlet will be the guy she loses her virginity to. I picture an Ophelia who is a bookish, tense, nervous, nerdy and sarcastic young woman—basically, Hamlet’s female counterpart. Dark clothing, glasses, awkward body language.

Unlike him, she can’t go swanning off to Wittenberg, so she had to educate herself. She’s an autodidact, nose stuck in book all the time, uninterested in affairs of state and clearly envious of her brother, Laertes, who gets to travel abroad. Ophelia is a brilliant young woman, but the pressures of home life, the sexism of Danish society and the treatment she receives from Hamlet all take a toll on her psyche. She doesn’t learn that her father has been murdered and immediately go insane; her mental health has been deteriorating long before that incident. As Hamlet is feigning insanity, Ophelia, right before his eyes, is actually going bonkers. By “twinning” the representations of Hamlet and Ophelia, you reinforce the pathos of each character’s situation and dovetail their narrative arcs neatly.

So what do we do about the infamous, bathetic mad scene, in which she hands out various plants and herbs to Claudius, Gertrude, etc., and sings obscure folk tunes referencing her father’s death while making sexually suggestive puns? I’m not entirely sure. These pathetic musical scenes (like the “Willow” scene in Othello) were probably the Elizabethan equivalent of tear-jerking musical montages, and they really date badly. You’ve got these tunes, you’ve got the herbs, you’ve got a crazy girl. I picture her with a handheld tape recorder, pressing play and singing badly to cheesy madrigal-type music. Maybe the scene takes place in a garden, so she’s picking herbs. Maybe the herbs are invisible. Also, I want to see the drowning onstage: See her floating in a tank upstage like a mermaid.

Of course, such bold directorial choices could make this a Hamlet that’s really all about Ophelia. Still I can think of worse things. In the comments below, share your best/worst Ophelia experiences and brainstorms.