Goodnight Sweet Prince removes the greater portion of the text and most of the characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and instead gives us a view from within the eye of a grieving prince’s emotional storm.

Adapted and directed by Liesel Badorrek, the action takes place in a theatrical space – an exploded, curtained mini-theatre designed by Keerthi Subramanyam – that does double and overlapping duty as Elsinore and the inside of the haunted Hamlet’s head.

Jack Twelvetree and Raj Labade in Goodnight Sweet Prince. Photo © Campbell Parsons

The 75-minute work is performed by two actors – Raj Labade and Jack Twelvetree – who alternate, night to night, between playing the title role and Horatio/Claudius. Twelvetree was Hamlet on this occasion and gave a strong performance, as far as the text would let him. Labade gave us a louche, villainous (and quite funny) Claudius and a Horatio of greater range than we are accustomed to.

Badorrek’s edit, with its piercing focus on psychological trauma, turns Shakespeare’s great marshalling yard of grief, humour, play-acting and revenge into something more like a monorail. The journey is still worth taking, but one of the thrills inherent...