The actor play­ing Ham­let is suf­fer­ing a cri­sis of con­fi­dence.  Is the play as he remem­bers? Mac­beth drops in to chivvy him along. Then Oth­el­lo and King Lear give it a go as well.

This solo show sees Michael Hurst dis­play his skill at deliv­er­ing Shake­speare along with hilar­i­ous­ly phys­i­cal stage com­bat moves. (Some of them looked a bit dan­ger­ous — tum­bling around the stage, knock­ing over the props.) Although the char­ac­ter Ham­let is osten­si­bly the focus, it’s Mac­beth who steals the show. Wee cocky Mac­beth all blus­ter and charm. Part of it is the accent, most of it is Hurst hav­ing fun.

A great round yel­low rug neat­ly defines the room on stage (design­er John Ver­ryt). Com­bined with an old arm­chair and a cou­ple of tiny tables it cap­tures the depress­ing atmos­phere of a lone­ly flat. It con­trasts nice­ly with the cos­tume the actor wears — an elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ed dou­blet, puffy breech­es, tights, and love­ly shoes with rib­bon ties. (Cos­tume design­er Les­ley Burkes-Hard­ing.)

Peo­ple who know their Shake­speare will like this (as long as they don’t mind Shake­speare being messed with). The rest of us will enjoy it, but we’ll have the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that we’re not quite in on the joke.