At the core of what has made Doctor Faustus a universal play and often quoted literary motive for well over 400 years, is man’s fascination of reaching beyond what is known and what he is ready to sacrifice for that. It’s nothing less than the progress of society that depends on the very urge to move the boundaries of knowledge forward. A new approach to a classic text, which gives us a different angle on the brooding Faustian hero is therefore always welcome. The fabric of the narrative is well known: German scholar Faust dons the robes of common scholarly disciplines and shrouds himself into the dangerous cloak of dark magic.

An empty chamber, a chair and a desk with four books – it’s a plain setting for the infamous pact with the devil, which turns out to be a disappointingly anaemic affair.

Christopher Staines gives a committed performance as Faustus but he does not quite create the necessary magic pull to hold the audience’s attention for the entirety of the piece. It all hangs together somehow but only by a thread, and instead of going from soaring height to height, the piece moves somewhat sluggishly from well-known quotes and even better known soliloquies. Devils, dragons, magic tricks – that’s what Marlowe’s existentialist romp is known for. If the spectacular is removed from the piece it should be replaced by something very substantial and fundamental. It hasn’t been, and that’s the crux; and it so happens that the audience arrives at the famous Helen of Troy speech without really having made the emotional journey to appreciate the melancholic yearning of a man filled with regret who is yet unable to repent.

A stark deviation from the original text set in the Vatican shakes the whole piece up a bit. In an improvisation sequence Staines degenerates into a childlike state and speaks in funny voices with little torn-out-bible-pages paper men. The sight of a man who was out to examine the fabric of space, human nature and knowledge and ends up mistaking practical jokes for power needs to be more tragic than what’s offered here by Staines and Parr.

Or is the actor in the end just a mad man in a cell? Is the voice of the devilish henchman Mephistopheles just in his head? If this was a proposed reading the directorial pushes were maybe too weak to create a gripping conceptual angle. It’s stripped too bare to be visually engaging; even the setting of the Rose excavation site in the background dotted with hundreds of candles doesn’t change that.

While his last year’s Hamlet was a bravely cut version that zipped along rather nicely, this new offering from director Martin Parr lacks a distinct narrative purpose. One can’t help but think that the commemoration of Marlowe’s 450th birthday would have deserved a more captivating version.

Please note: The reviewer saw the preview on the day before the show opened.

The story of the young Dane contemplating how to take revenge on the uncle who has murdered his father has been done uncountable times by companies throughout the centuries. Contemplating love, madness, suicide, family and politics, it’s a story that can serve as a vehicle for numerous explorations of political and social issues. In this version by director Martin Parr, Hamlet is not given much time to pointlessly ponder his actions.

Turning a play that usually sprawls between two and a half and three hours down to the TV movie-length of 90 minutes is an achievement in itself. This Hamlet zips along rather nicely, and the fact that time is clearly out of joint in this interpretation overall plays to the advantage of the piece.

Only four actors play the most prominent characters in this version, and it is self-referential and witty about the play’s own performance and reception history. When Hamlet addresses the audience almost conversationally right from the beginning, we know that this chamber piece-approach is also aiming to explore motives of theatricality or performances of public personae.

For example, efficient text edits cut right to the core of the “play in the play”, and having Claudius (Liam McKenna in a charismatic performance) give the audience the murdering knave. This elevates the whole section from a mere plot contrivance to make Hamlet see his uncle’s guilt into an eye-opening observation of such human foibles like flattery or guilt and how they relate to our inner demons and fears.

To have both Getrude and Ophelia played by the same actress (Suzanne Marie) opens the door to some very intriguing implications, some of which might be subtly about incestuous urges, others, when Getrude recounts the news of Ophelia’s demise, are played nearly like an out-of-body recollection.

It’s not an abstract meta-Hamlet though, the characters and their motivations are very much the focus. Seeing Hamlet performed on the site of the original Rose Theatre is a special treat, so the set and props are minimal and effective. Rebecca Brower’s design, which is dominated by red strings of light, adds depth to the character’s actions and turns the challenging and confined space of the Rose into an intriguing spectacle. It jars slightly with the chamber theatre approach of the piece, but it is still wonderful to watch how the performers claim the unusual space as their own. The Rose has a great acoustic for a place that’s essentially a little wooden stage with a roof looking out on an excavation site, and in this historically-laden place Shakespeare’s words sound as fresh and crisp as the day they were written.

Jonathan Broadbent’s Hamlet is a soft-spoken and sometimes impish man – a strong performance with a more adult-like approach to the character, which made sense in the overall arc of the story. And Jamie Sheasby, faced with the challenge of being Laertes, Rosenkrantz and the Gravedigger, found some very convincing and entertaining-to-watch nuances.

Not all of what was attempted works though. A card game with poisoned tequila shots never quite reaches the dramatic heights of the sword fight in the original. This is a great Hamlet for Shakespeare new-comers and open-minded connoisseurs. To me it felt like nothing essential was missing from the story, but with its ruthless cuts it is definitely not for people hallowing the original text.