Hamlet is often made to wear the news of the day, contorting its story of murderous coups and invading armies into a mirror for whatever geopolitical crisis is topical. Yet there is another tack that circumnavigates the simple blow-by-blow of the narrative to reach a more introspective territory. Director Damien Ryan’s production for Bell Shakespeare, finally reaching Sydney after a five month national tour, takes this path. This Hamlet focuses on the personal over the political without attempting to drape this play in any ill-fitting contemporary allegories or politicised metaphors. Instead this highly physical and often graphically unsettling account offers a brutal portrait of a gnarled and disordered mind.

Josh McConville as Hamlet

While this production avoids any overt cultural or historical pigeonholing, it is still rich in thought provoking detail that adds another simmering layer of cerebral insight. Alicia Clements’ design suggests we are in an ornate palace, at some point in the 20th Century. Splitting the stage in two with a lavish wall of darkened glass doors, the set is deliberately claustrophobic – the gilded prison of Denmark that Hamlet feels trapped by. Characters linger...