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.