liverpool shakespeare festival's hamlet at st george's hall

Luckily, considering this year's summer, the action has been moved wholly indoors (I recall a perishing Macbeth in St James' Gardens a couple of years ago) to the splendour of St George's Hall's small concert room.
So even if you're not a devotee of the Bard, the chance to spend a couple of hours in that setting should have you tripping merrily down to Lime Street.
But director Max Rubin has also created a very accessible production of Hamlet, paring it down to a touch over two-and-a-half hours (including interval) and packing it with plenty of action.
The "stage" is both the regular raised stage and the floor of the concert room, meaning the audience sits around three sides of much of the action.
That does mean, however, that if the actors have their back to you the dialogue can sound a bit muffled.
But it also means you are close to what's going on (a la the Everyman for example) and if you sit behind the chaise longue which is placed to one side, you may occasionally have your view blocked by cast members (I missed Hamlet's entrance that way!) but you do get a very, very close up performance of the "to be or not to be" soliloquy.
Stephen Fletcher makes a pretty engaging Prince of Denmark and I like the way he doesn't give in to the temptation to shout, shout, shout - instead he internalises his torment (but not in a Daniel Day Lewis way who ended up thinking he had seen his own father in the ghost scene!).
He's also a natural verse speaker.
Anyway, read my review in today's Echo and then go and see for yourself