Though this be madness, yet there is method in it

Something is rotten in the state of … well, almost everywhere these days, which might account for the recent rush of Hamlet adaptations, with an anime version (Scarlet), a documentary version (King Hamlet), an origin story (Hamnet), and even Grand Theft Hamlet, a version set inside a video- game.

This new reworking places Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy among contemporary London’s South Asian business elite, and the results are sometimes electrifying, sometimes frustrating but always intensely watchable, thanks to an intimate and anguished central performance by Riz Ahmed (The Sound of Metal).

Setting Shakespeare’s language against modern trappings can be tricky — this is probably the first version of the melancholy prince who snorts cocaine — but director Aniel Karia (Surge) and scripter Michael Lesslie (who worked on a 2015 version of Macbeth) mostly handle the update in ways that feel urgent and alive.

Hamlet, having returned to England for his father’s funeral, finds his widowed mother, Gertrude (Bollywood actress Sheeba Chaddha), about to marry his uncle Claudius (Art Malik, the veteran British character actor last seen in The Woman in Cabin 10).

After a vision of his father’s tormented spirit (Mission Majnu’s Avijit Dutt) appears, telling his son he was murdered by Claudius and demanding vengeance, Hamlet is left in moral and psychological turmoil.

The basic setup hews close to the original, but there are definite 2025 vibes: Elsinore is now a property company, and Fortinbras is a tent community of homeless activists displaced by the Elsinore Corporation’s voracious development.

There are strobing nightclub scenes, a showstopping dance number, a mic-drop wedding toast and a gory midpoint murder that wouldn’t be out of place in a slasher flick.

In other ways, however, this an extremely stripped-down take on Shakespeare’s longest tragedy. (Kenneth Branagh’s famously full 1996 adaptation clocked in at more than four hours.) Textual purists might be miffed that Horatio is gone and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are busy elsewhere.

While this lean script loses some of the conceptual layers of the play, along with several subplots, there’s a lot of raw, condensed power in what remains. Lesslie has cut ruthlessly but also rearranged deftly, and there are astonishingly effective individual scenes.

Karia’s direction evokes a noirish atmosphere. Hamlet wanders through nighttime city streets and unfinished construction projects and his family’s massive suburban mansion. The camera prowls along with him, delivering close-up shots that underline Hamlet’s isolation, grief and rage, the sense that he’s increasingly trapped in his own racing mind.

There are big choices clearly meant to feel unexpected — the iconic “to be or not to be” soliloquy is delivered as Hamlet speeds along a midnight motorway in a luxury BMW, threatening to veer into the wrong lane.

But just as frequently, it is Ahmed’s small gestures, slight inflections and brief pauses that make Shakespeare’s words feel both familiar and new. Ahmed’s work often feels startlingly natural, especially in the early scenes, which include long stretches of silence.

Ahmed gets stalwart support from Malik’s chilly corporate killer and Chaddha’s sorrowing mother. Ophelia (The Rings of Power’s Morfydd Clark) has the ethereal beauty often associated with her character, but it’s underlined here with something steely and precise.

Laertes (Joe Alwyn, who was also in Hamnet) gets a bit lost in this adaptation, but Timothy Spall’s menacing version of Polonius is brilliant, giving his brief interactions with Hamlet hints of Succession’s nasty dynastic powerplays.

As the story moves towards its doomed ending, things get loud and frenetic, and the filmmakers’ pared-back approach can feel rushed. But even with its flaws, this Hamlet compels.

winnipegfreepress.com/alisongillmor