The opening scene suggests that this production will explore the Oedipal territory of mother and son bonds and betrayals. Prince Hamlet sits listening to a recording of his uncle Claudius, who calls Gertrude his “sometime sister”, now queen. Those words snag and repeat while a grainy home video of the infant Hamlet and his mother are projected at the back.
But we are wrongfooted and it quickly turns into something more thrillerish as director John Haidar gives us a modern gothic melodrama with inky backdrops, jagged sound and sudden frenzies of violence.
