As someone who’s nev­er read or seen a per­form­ance of Ham­let, I might seem like an unlikely review­er for TheJoMarsh’s adapt­a­tion at Bats Theatre. How­ever, if I, with my inex­per­i­ence, can eas­ily fol­low and enjoy ‘Ham­let – One Hour. Three Act­ors. Den­mark Will Nev­er Be the Same,’ then any­one can.

In this high-tech, dysto­pi­an take on Ham­let, the tal­en­ted Ham­ish Boyle and Helen Vivi­enne Fletch­er play 11 char­ac­ters between them, while Shaun Swain takes on the role of Ham­let. Man­aging 5 to 6 char­ac­ters each is no small feat, but Helen and Ham­ish each bring their roles to life bril­liantly. The use of col­oured sashes helps to dis­tin­guish the vari­ous char­ac­ters and their alli­ances.

Although it’s been a while since I last saw a Shakespearean play, the act­ors quickly drew me into the rhythm of the lan­guage. They skill­fully blen­ded the dia­lect into a mod­ern cadence and per­fect com­ic tim­ing, mak­ing it easy to fol­low the story.

I admit, I did not do my home­work, and skipped the pre-show guide.  So I only have myself to blame when I ini­tially struggled to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between char­ac­ters, like Laertes and Ophelia. How­ever, the script and act­ors’ clear dif­fer­en­ti­ation of style between char­ac­ters soon cleared things up.

The set design was a mas­ter­ful demon­stra­tion of how ima­gin­a­tion and clev­er applic­a­tion of simple ideas can recre­ate a space and cap­ture audi­ences’ ima­gin­a­tion. The pro­ject­or map­ping and mov­ing set pieces cre­ated a whim­sic­al, futur­ist­ic back­drop that added to the over­all exper­i­ence.

Thanks to Jo Marsh’s skil­ful con­dens­ing of a four-hour play into just one hour and the lively energy of the act­ors, “Ham­let – One Hour” offers an enter­tain­ing even­ing for every­one, regard­less of their famili­ar­ity with Shakespeare or Ham­let.