Though this be madness, yet there is method in't

Act V plays out in around thirty two minutes (if you exclude the well-deserved applause at the end of the production). The music announcing the infamous gravediggers scene has a Calypso feel which sets an appropriately lighthearted, joyful even, and certainly irreverent tone - reinforced by the Gravedigger's ad lib of 'ya bastard' directed towards Yorick's skull. Hamlet's more measured response in contrast demonstrates his fascination with the physical processes of death and beyond. Ophelia's body, wrapped in a shroud, is carried in by Laertes. He lays her down tenderly by the grave and weeps over her form - echoing Ophelia's own lament for her father in the previous act. To the evident distress of all around, Laertes leaps right down into the grave as though he cannot bear to be physically separated from her. His action provokes what turns into an unseemly graveside brawl with Hamlet. Claudius hatches his plan for Hamlet's end with Laertes after...

Ophelia makes Polonius 'present' in the absence of a body This is the shortest act of the production at just 28 minutes, but is full of pace and action. The stage is filled with ever-changing movement. Increasingly sinister and ominous music between scenes contributes to the building sense of threat, and the movement to different locations seems almost seamless; as though we are running through the castle with the characters. There are instructions, letters, machinations, plotting. Hamlet's arrest by a guard is very physical: he is thrown to the floor in a half-nelson submission hold. His insolent foot tapping and movement, and loose-limbed rebellious mocking of Claudius get the audience on side and there is much laughter - but his reactions seem those of a man who has run out of options and has nothing left to lose. Everything about Essiedu's appearance and manner is subversive; down to his shabby clothing and turned-up trousers - in such contrast to the costume...

There are many ways of revising, but a good way is to revisit parts of the play and explore them with a different lens from the one you used the first time round. We have known that Horatio is trustworthy from the opening scenes of the play. He has been a voice of reason since the skeptical intelligence he displayed at the appearance of the Ghost, and an accurate documenter of events in his explanation to Hamlet - and it is he who is chosen by Hamlet to let the ' story be known, 'report me and my cause aright/to the unsatisfied' (V.ii.344-345), at the end of the play. Begin, then, with this list of events from Horatio's final speech: And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I Truly...