Review: Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet

To be or not to be - that is the question. Whether, as initially reported, Shakespeare's most famous speech had been diminished by opening the play - or, by showing Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet to be a tormented soul for whom suicide has long been a hovering possibility - Lyndsey Turner's hugely anticipated production had found a new way to explore the Danish prince's state of mind.

As it turns out, the speech has been moved again since those prematurely reviewed preview performances. The order of things is still rejigged. We don't open on Elsinore's battlements but with Cumberbatch's Hamlet listening in solitude to records like a sullen teenager.

It's an image of regression explored to the hilt after Hamlet realises his dad was murdered by his uncle. He doesn't so much throw his toys into the corner of the room as take them out. This psychological response can make sense. But the problem with this approach is that Cumberbatch's prince is so worldly, witty and urbane that it comes across as a self-indulgence that he'd ridicule mercilessly in anyone else. He dresses in a soldier costume plucked from an old toy chest. Oddly - really oddly - it still fits. What else has he got in there that can illustrate the insecurity induced by knowing that your mother is sleeping with your father's murderer - a big nappy?

So, in Es Devlin's astonishingly beautiful set, most of the action takes place in Elsinore's panelled interior of aquamarine, which works much less well when the play's action is located beyond the castle's walls - an initially arresting idea ultimately ends up serving the play less well than it should.