We think we know Hamlet: the ghost, the grief, the famous soliloquies, the revenge and the bloodshed. Yet this bold reimagining and new work from Send For Productions strips away the familiar architecture to take us somewhere far more intimate, inside the fractured mind of the young man at its centre. This is Hamlet experienced from the inside out. A familiar prince, seen through a distinctive lens.

Liesel Badorrek, Raj Labade and Jack Twelvetree’s shared authorship, creative direction and performance give the work a strong sense of vision and cohesion as they venture into a dark meditation on the repercussion of choices and grief. They peel back layers of trauma, exposing the forces driving Hamlet towards his final reckoning. Both actors brings extraordinary instinct, responsiveness and skill to the roles of Hamlet, Horatio, the Ghost and the surrounding characters.

Badorrek knows exactly how to turn the intimacy of a two-hander into a strength, setting it against the enormity of Hamlet’s world and the claustrophobia of the Old Fitz basement theatre. The politics, betrayal, anguish, madness and vengeance are distilled into concentrated tension, building through what is said, withheld and suddenly released. A change in posture or flicker of light melds and fractures the psychological landscape, while the 70-minute running time moves with remarkable velocity. 

The visual language is imaginative and layered, creating an atmospheric world where memory and illusion blur. Keerthi Subramanyam’s set of a dusty, decaying theatre transforms into chamber of self-examination, evoking crumbling grandeur and an abandoned world of old players and forgotten stories. Moth-eaten curtains and random props suggest a history left behind. Suspended between reality and hallucination, the past hovers at the edges.

This is heightened by Ross Johnston’s superb soundscape, which works in tandem with Verity Hampson’s lighting design. Subtle musical phrases gather beneath the dialogue, while distant rifle cracks and mortar fire intrude with an ominous, anticipatory force, placing Hamlet in a limbo of despair and political violence as the wider conflict surrounds him.

Hampson’s astonishingly evocative lighting continually reshapes the space, snapping from colour floods and pools of light into dramatic contrasts of deep shadow and sharp beams that allow the actors to shift between characters with startling impact. Silhouettes stretch across the walls while diffusion and haze create living shadows The effect is distinctly supernatural.

Both Labade and Twelvetree humanise Hamlet and Horatio without absolving or romanticising them. Twelvetree finds something especially affecting in Hamlet’s tormented hindsight and contradictions: his intelligence could not save him, his sensitivity made him more susceptible to manipulation, and his determination to uncover the truth only drew him further into uncertainty. He is a superb study all-consuming grief. Twelvetree makes the physical and mental toll palpable, his anxiety pushing Hamlet towards a breaking point where trauma and perception become impossible to disentangle.

The scene in which Hamlet remembers his love for Ophelia is particularly affecting. Catherine Lagaaia’s silver voice emerges as Ophelia, as though Hamlet is calling her back from memory. The effect is an exquisitely judged moment of intimacy and stillness, without sentimentalising it. For a brief moment, the brutality surrounding Hamlet gives way to the tenderness of what he could have been and has lost.

Raj Labade brings a compelling counterpoint through Horatio, whose steadiness offers a glimpse of another possibility. The tragedy and its denouement are well known; what feels striking here is the sense of aftermath, and the question of what might have been different if there had been a pause for introspection before anger and revenge became action. Horatio’s capacity to observe rather than immediately react gives him a significance beyond that of a loyal friend. He becomes witness to the fallout as consequence collapses into a single night.

The role-swapping is central to the experience, with Labade and Twelvetree exchanging characters between performances. Having seen Twelvetree as Hamlet and Labade as Horatio, it would be fascinating to see how the dynamic shifts, adding another layer to the question of identity as each actor brings a different chemistry and perspective.

this singular interpretation so arresting is that we are not simply watching Hamlet’s final descent, but being given time to consider the person inside it. Beneath the myth is a man who could be any one of us. A story of sorrow, pride, choices and repercussions, and the painful realisation of who we are only when it is too late.

This is one version of Hamlet worth getting inside before the final fade. Goodnight Sweet Prince at The Old Fitz Theatre closes 15 August. Grab a ticket if you can.
For details see: https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/goodnight-sweet-prince

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